I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

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

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

My doorman is more important to me than any head of any company. He keeps us safe.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.

The community – more than two billion people use our products, and we get that, with that, a lot of people are using that for a lot of good, but we also have a responsibility to mitigate the darker things that people are gonna try to do.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

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.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

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

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‚hopey changey stuff,‘ she was right: there was nothing there.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

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

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

There’s no way now for you to get a Democratic or Republican nomination without being able to raise $200 or $300 million or more. I would not be inclined to do that, and I would not be capable of doing it.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

The fundamental question I believe is, ‚Is political Islam in our best interest?‘ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the 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.

Obviously, I’m no fan of the radical left.

For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

It’s a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

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.

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

When I ask OGs why there’s so much division in the streets, nobody never really knows. But you know one thing that everybody always mention? A woman.

I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill, nobody – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

We have the best government that money can buy.

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.