In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

The Democratic position seems to be everything is going to be free. Free education. Free health care. Free housing. Free love. Free kittens, I don’t know.

I understand everybody in this country doesn’t agree with the decisions I’ve made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand.

Part of the problem is there are people in Washington, D.C. in positions of power to whom the border is just a nuisance, and I think some of them believe that illegal immigration is a moral good. It is not. It undermines legal immigration.

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

The fundamental question I believe is, ‚Is political Islam in our best interest?‘ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

You can’t just have slogans, you can’t just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it’s going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

A President cannot always be popular.

Being president isn’t anything like reality TV. It’s not about sending insulting tweets or making fiery speeches; it’s about whether or not the candidate can handle the awesome responsibility of leading this country.

The President’s post should not be politicised. Once a president is elected, he is above politics.

Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world. It’s minuscule, few percent.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.

Every President wants to do right.

The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.

Since the team understands that the leader is de facto in charge, in that respect, a leader has nothing to prove. But in another respect, a leader has everything to prove: Every member of the team must develop the trust and confidence that their leader will exercise good judgment, remain calm, and make the right decisions when it matters most.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that either the Democratic or Republican party has produced at least since I’ve been around. He’s fresh, he’s new, he’s insightful.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone, but he can’t run a state.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.