All government, of course, is against liberty.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

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

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I’m against allegations, but I always welcome criticism.

It sure is hell to be president.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Obama, of course, outspent McCain.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

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

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas… cultures… and systems of thought, we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word ‚freedom‘ means than I see much evidence of in America.

Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the – he said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street. They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.

It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‚solution‘ to society’s ‚problems.‘

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

I told y’all I didn’t vote, right? But if I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted for Trump.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

I love being in the United States Senate.

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.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

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.

A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is. And there is no way to hide who they really are.