I think America has always been polarized.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

I have not endorsed Trump and will not do so.

The FBI should not be a political body.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

If people wonder, yes, Hillary Clinton is my friend. She has been a friend to me and Barack and Malia and Sasha, and Bill and Chelsea have been embracing and supportive from the very day my husband took the oath of office.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

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.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I don’t say very much I don’t really think through. I know that sounds inconsistent with Joe Biden.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

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

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

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

Facts are not liberals‘ strong suit. Rhetoric is.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

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 think that America’s recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

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.

I do not believe we will have a war with Iran.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

There is no gambling like politics.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

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

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

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.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.