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.

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

My folks ain’t graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family – and I come from a big family.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

If someone lies, well, you had a choice to trust that person or not. I think the way my father raised me, well, he trusted everybody. And that worked for him.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

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

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

I think governments can’t do much.

‚Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.‘ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But 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.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

Finality is not the language of politics.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.

Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

I believe that a government has only one religion – India first. A government has only one holy book – our Constitution. A government has only one kind of devotion – towards nation.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Doing Saturday Night Live definitely affects my relationship with my girlfriend and with my family, because you feel so much pressure to do well that night. But I think everyone’s grown to accept that and so they give me my space at the show.

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

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

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Money ain’t everything.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a moment.

Regarding marriage, it – somehow, it didn’t happen. One fellow in such a big family not getting married is not an issue.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.