And I think it’s that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I’m a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can’t be too small to suit me.

Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove – disapprove of their point of view.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern. But what is the best that we can offer to those who govern? Prayer!

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

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

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.

I loved being Secretary of State, that’s probably evident to everyone who watched me.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

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

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

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.

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

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

I do have a political agenda. It’s to have as few regulations as possible.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

It sure is hell to be president.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.