I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.

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.

I don’t think President Trump is a racist.

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

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.

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

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

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.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

It isn’t generally the case that liberals dominate entire hierarchies. That isn’t generally how it works, because the hierarchies are usually set up so that conservatives fill up the hierarchies; it’s in the nature of hierarchy.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

I love being in the United States Senate.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

I’m mainstream.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Politicians love regulating. That’s part of the whole power structure.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right?

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

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.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.