The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

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.

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

The ‚public‘ scares me, but people I trust.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

What is politics? Political system is equal to development politics plus political politics.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

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

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.

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

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.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue.

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

Empire and liberty.

My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.