Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

But do I think that our actions in anyway violate the War Powers Resolution, the answer is no.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

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?‘

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

My career as Nipsey Hussle is based on my life as Ermias Asghedom.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as ‚evil.‘ Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.

Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

I think politicians really go with the tide.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we are going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

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

Obama, of course, outspent McCain.