If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

My name can’t be that tough to pronounce!

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

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.

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

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

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

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

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

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.

The FBI should not be a political body.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

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

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.

Many people listen to what I have to say and I appear a lot in media, so therefore I influence a lot of people and therefore I have a bigger responsibility because I have a bigger platform.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

I have a reputation for taking on governors a lot more powerful than me.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.