As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

Intervention only works when the people concerned seem to be keen for peace.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

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

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don’t understand why it’s the government’s responsibility.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

No violent extreme endures.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

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

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!

Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That’s part of the normal diplomatic relations.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

My government is working for the common man. Our priority is the poor of the country. We want good governance through a dynamic and seamless government.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

It’s time to stop thinking of the Republican Party as an exclusive club where your ideological card is checked at the door, and start thinking about how we can attract more solution-based leaders like Nathan Fletcher and Anthony Adams.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

Disagreement is something normal.

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

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

I’m not a conservative of any kind.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.