All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting ‚the rich‘ to pay ‚their fair share‘ is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

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

The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

I’ll assure you this: I will have nothing to do with politics.

I felt rich when I was 20 years old and my wife was paying my bills. Just being in a band, I’ve always felt blessed.

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

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

I would remind you the lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa’s leading organization – and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

This is pure speculation, but for a period of time, a lot of getting into a party was through fundraising and volunteer work, and Republican women had more time to do that than democratic women, who were out there getting jobs.

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Actually, to be an effective person politically in this country, I think you have to be thirty or over, and also you have to be rich, well-placed, you have to be close to power. And I don’t think that young people, because they look young, can do much, as I think they are counterproductive.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

I think I was identified as a failed president because I wasn’t re-elected.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, ‚Gee, isn’t that wonderful?‘

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

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.

I think the word rich is all relative.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

I think governments can’t do much.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

I have never really thought that the Left was much in ‚array‘ as far as political purposes were concerned.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

When George W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon and verifiably wasn’t producing any more.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

It isn’t generally the case that liberals dominate entire hierarchies. That isn’t generally how it works, because the hierarchies are usually set up so that conservatives fill up the hierarchies; it’s in the nature of hierarchy.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.