Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be – protect themselves. That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

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

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

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

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

The safety of the people shall be the highest law.

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

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

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.

God’s angels often protect his servants from potential enemies.

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.

There’s a common perception among college administrators that they should conceal the high level of sexual assaults that take place on their campuses because it would bring discredit to the university, bring them a bad name if it was publicized.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

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.

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

We have the best government that money can buy.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

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 rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

We’ve protected thousands of people in Libya; we have not seen a single U.S. casualty; there’s no risks of additional escalation. This operation is limited in time and in scope.

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

You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.

Obviously, there’s a part of me that takes the world of violence and death very seriously. However, when it comes to protection, or when it comes to just the skill of shooting… I’ve gone to the range with sniper rifles and things like that.

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It’s so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you’re also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it’s just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.

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

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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

I never talk about my next project.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

I don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

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

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

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.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

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

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

We are all the President’s men.

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

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.

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

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

I don’t see anything that’s come out on WikiLeaks that was a legitimate secret.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

A good lawyer is going to try to protect her client.