I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

Be not a slave of words.

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

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.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

The way I talk is bizarre.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed – and they’re, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

I am a simple Buddhist monk – no more, no less.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

I’m modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

The FBI should not be a political body.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.