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.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

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

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

‚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.

Obama, of course, outspent McCain.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting ‚the rich‘ to pay ‚their fair share‘ is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

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.

Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

I’m highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don’t feel in tune with British politics.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

Government’s first duty and highest obligation is public safety.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

When I came to Johannesburg from the countryside, I knew nobody, but many strangers were very kind to me. I then was dragged into politics, and then, subsequently, I became a lawyer.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

I have a reputation for taking on governors a lot more powerful than me.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

I have something in common with Nazis in that I am opposed to the radical Left. And when you oppose the radical Left, you end up being a part of a much larger group that includes Nazis in it.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

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.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

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.

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.