If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Respect the burden.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

In most communities it is illegal to cry ‚fire‘ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

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.

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

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

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.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

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.

I am such a political person.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

I don’t compare myself to anyone else; I don’t make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that’s okay by me.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church and others are non-believers, from the bottom of my heart I give this silent blessing to each and every one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you but knowing that each one of you is a child of God.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

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

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

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?

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

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!

In the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s, the trainers would grind you, and eventually they would break something – they would break an ankle in ways that it would heal. It was just the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect for wrestling.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

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.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

I don’t envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.