Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

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.

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

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.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

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.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

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.‘

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

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

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.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

We have always been prepared to negotiate with the U.S. government everything that has to do with bilateral relations, on a basis of the strictest mutual respect for the sovereign rights of each country. We will never try to ask the government of the United States to change its economic and political system.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

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

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 have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

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.

I’m glad I can’t vote.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.

Concentration of executive power, unless it’s very temporary and for specific circumstances, let’s say fighting world war two, it’s an assault on democracy.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

How can a president not be an actor?

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

I don’t vote. I don’t do no voting.

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

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

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

One of the roles of the Presidency is to lead a political party. Having a President in office is usually a huge advantage to a party because it gives the party a mouthpiece and an advocate at the highest level.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.