I’ll be honest: I haven’t ruled politics out.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

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.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

I have never really thought that the Left was much in ‚array‘ as far as political purposes were concerned.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Look, when you’re the president, there’s all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it’s just the nature of the job.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

We have the best government that money can buy.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

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.

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

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.‘

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

I love being able to be political without any political affiliation.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

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.

If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

I think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

Integrity means that you are the same in public as you are in private.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

I had just as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats when I ran for president. But I should have organized the Democratic Party to get me re-elected.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

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

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.