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 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.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

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 know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!

Debates, I hate.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Politics have no relation to morals.

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.

I do not believe that government should be in the business of telling women what they should do with their bodies.

The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

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

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, ‚Will you all just shut up!‘ And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, ‚What are you doing?!‘ I was like, ‚You better get up here! I don’t play the fighting games.‘

I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time – for 40 years – and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

I know the Federal Reserve Bank can continue to print more and more money… but city and state governments cannot.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.

Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

You beat him verbally. You beat him mentally, and then finally, you beat him physically. That’s the three ways to beat a man.

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.

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

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.

I believe that a government has only one religion – India first. A government has only one holy book – our Constitution. A government has only one kind of devotion – towards nation.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

A Christian who does not pray for those who govern is not a good Christian.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

I think governments can’t do much.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.

Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.