I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we’ve got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

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

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

That government is best which governs least.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

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

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

I cannot live without books.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

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

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.