I don’t even know what the issues are. I haven’t paid attention to politics in a long time. It’s actually not something that I really even enjoy. It’s way off my radar.

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.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

Political courage is not political suicide.

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

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.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars.

America is just downright mean.

I guess you’d call me an independent, since I’ve never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

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.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

There’s some jerks. There’s some big egos. There are a few that think they’re one of the Founding Fathers… in both parties.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

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.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

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

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

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

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.

I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

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

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

I don’t think I would run for president.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Look, when you’re the president, there’s all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it’s just the nature of the job.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

I am not a crook.

It’s not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It’s who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

Be extra careful in the work environment with those who like to maintain their position through charm and being political, rather than getting things done. They are very prone to envying and hating those who work hard and get results. They will slander and sabotage you without any warning.

I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

I would not vote for the mayor. It’s not just because he didn’t invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.

I can’t go out with a Republican.

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

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

If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.