I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‚The government’s corrupt,‘ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

People like to talk about war.

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?

You are twice as likely to be struck by lightning as you around to be affected by a terrorist event in the United States.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

When Hillary served in the Senate, I saw her work day and night as a member of the Armed Services Committee – working with Republicans and Democrats to keep our military strong and protect our troops and their families.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

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

Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

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

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

The United States and our allies are determined: we refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

I’m prepared to say that law enforcement should be allowed to seize the guns of those who are suspected to be involved in domestic terrorism.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

ISIS is not an existential threat to something happening to someone in the United States of America. It’s a serious problem overseas, but it’s confusing and frightening.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people’s trust in their government.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

People forget… that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that’s what happened.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.