Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

I know I have a responsibility to the fans.

It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

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.

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

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

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.

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

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

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

Empire and liberty.

I think governments can’t do much.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

It is my responsibility that I must make demonstrative efforts to reach out to every citizen of the country.

I think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term ‚reform‘ is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various level of the government, in work practices and procedures.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

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.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.

Every President wants to do right.

I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

People need to be insured so when you have an accident out there, or when something catastrophic happens to you, that you’re covered and there’s not someone else has to pay for you. That is as simple as that.

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls… that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.