Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.

I think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

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 am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

This is pure speculation, but for a period of time, a lot of getting into a party was through fundraising and volunteer work, and Republican women had more time to do that than democratic women, who were out there getting jobs.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

There is no gambling like politics.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

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.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

I got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

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.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I’m telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

I have decided in 2020 to run for president.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Power is a complicated word and can take many forms.

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.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.