We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

Work alone is noble.

It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

No nation should stoke instability in its neighbor’s country.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

People are finding it harder and harder to relate to foreign policy.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

You can do without a woman but not a typewriter.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.

I’ve known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.

Nobody is my boss.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

For 2,500 years, India has never invaded anybody.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel’s neighbours.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

I have always seen the United States as a force of good. And I have learned that there is the idealistic part about what we can do at the U.N. and there is a doable part. And I have learned what is more doable.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

War is what happens when language fails.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

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

When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

I don’t know if I’ve ever cared much what others think.

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.

The assertion that ‚all men are created equal‘ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

I don’t want followers.