Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

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

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

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

Africans require, want, the franchise on the basis of one man one vote. They want political independence.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

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.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

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

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

People forget… that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that’s what happened.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‚election.‘

Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

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.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

If I ever go to West Africa, it would probably be for a free concert. I would want to do something for the people there. Maybe we can make a whole event, the way Bob Marley would have done it. Just for the people. And if they climb over the gate, let them climb over the gate.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

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

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

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.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

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.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

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

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

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.

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

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.