I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn’t want to give up power.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I have decided in 2020 to run for president.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

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?‘

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

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values and your vision and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Tolkien is eminently filmable, I think. ‚The Lord of the Rings‘ is intensely… landscaped. But ‚Discworld‘ is about dialogue, which is one reason why it might be hard to film.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

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.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

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.

And frankly, I don’t understand – I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat – but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight. She’s a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be President of the United States of America. She’s easily qualified to be Vice President of the United States of America.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

If everybody that voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election.

Words are loaded pistols.

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

I sell escapism.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate – there is no such thing. Presidents are human.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

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

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

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.