If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

I’ve never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country.

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.

And frankly, I don’t understand – I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat – but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

Washington isn’t a city, it’s an abstraction.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

I do have a political agenda. It’s to have as few regulations as possible.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

I think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

Americans… still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

I just didn’t want to get out there anymore; I didn’t want to get back into what I call ‚the swamp.‘ And the other reason why is I don’t think it’s good for the presidency for a former president to be opining about his successor. President Obama’s got plenty of critics – and I’m just not gonna be one.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

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

I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

Government’s first duty and highest obligation is public safety.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

To restore the trust of the people, we must reform the way the government operates.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term ‚reform‘ is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various level of the government, in work practices and procedures.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‚election.‘

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I know Gov. Christie. We’ve met a couple of times.

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

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.

I think Canadians are more interested in international events than Americans because it is such a small country, so politics affect it more.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.