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.

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

I am such a political person.

People need to be insured so when you have an accident out there, or when something catastrophic happens to you, that you’re covered and there’s not someone else has to pay for you. That is as simple as that.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

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

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

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

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 effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

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.

When I came to Delhi and noticed an insider view, I felt what it was, and I was surprised to see it. It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

The problem with EMMA is that it is cost prohibitive for the small investors who were supposed to benefit from the new transparency.

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

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

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.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

A covenant made with God should be regarded not as restrictive but as protective.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.

Yeah, I’m an open book.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.

We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

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.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

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

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

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

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.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects 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.

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

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

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.

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?‘

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

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.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

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.

Over the course of my career in law enforcement, I have witnessed over and over again the selflessness and sacrifice of law enforcement who lay their lives on the line every day to protect people who they will never meet and people who will never know their names.