Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

A right delayed is a right denied.

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.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

Politics have no relation to morals.

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.

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

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.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

Politicians love regulating. That’s part of the whole power structure.

I fully understand the expectations of the state governments. Thus, I am better placed to work closely with the chief ministers.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

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.

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.

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.

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

There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

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

At the core, one of my original goals is to redefine what the streets expect.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

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

Even though I had won in other categories, I didn’t have any expectations when I came into F1. Qualifying fifth, finishing sixth? I didn’t expect it.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

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

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

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

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.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

I do have a political agenda. It’s to have as few regulations as possible.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.