I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.

I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

In our age there is no such thing as ‚keeping out of politics.‘ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors… I mean it.

Part of the problem is there are people in Washington, D.C. in positions of power to whom the border is just a nuisance, and I think some of them believe that illegal immigration is a moral good. It is not. It undermines legal immigration.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I’m a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can’t be too small to suit me.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

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.

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

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

Politics has always been ugly to me, and yet I accept that as a fact of life.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

My Democratic friends just can’t accept the fact that the American people chose Donald Trump to be president – it’s called democracy. My advice to them, and I say this gently: Fill out a ‚Hurt Feelings Report‘ and let’s move on.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.

I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21 because he promised to get us out of the Korean War.

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.

Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

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

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

When you are president, being able to clearly articulate detailed plans to help the people of this country is a good thing. Knowing what you’re doing is a good thing. And let me tell you, Hillary Clinton absolutely knows what she’s doing.

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.