Empire and liberty.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.

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

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

Politics is a noble activity. We should revalue it, practise it with vocation and a dedication that requires testimony, martyrdom, that is to die for the common good.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

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

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration… that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

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

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill, nobody – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.

In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

Freedom lies in being bold.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

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

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

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

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

I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.