If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

We are all the President’s men.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

People were asleep, but I think they’re waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick, and people are waking up and realizing they’ve got to get involved.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine’s economy.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

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

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

Being president isn’t anything like reality TV. It’s not about sending insulting tweets or making fiery speeches; it’s about whether or not the candidate can handle the awesome responsibility of leading this country.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, period.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don’t share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

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.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!

Politics is a noble activity. We should revalue it, practise it with vocation and a dedication that requires testimony, martyrdom, that is to die for the common good.

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

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

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?‘

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

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

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

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?

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

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

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’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.