I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

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

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be – protect themselves. That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

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.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

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

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

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

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

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

I know the Federal Reserve Bank can continue to print more and more money… but city and state governments cannot.

I believe that a government has only one religion – India first. A government has only one holy book – our Constitution. A government has only one kind of devotion – towards nation.

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

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

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

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

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

The Revolution did not assume a socialist nature because of support from the U.S.S.R.; it was the other way around: support from the U.S.S.R. was produced by the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. To such a degree, that when the U.S.S.R. disappears, Cuba keeps on being socialist.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

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.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

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

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

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

How can a president not be an actor?

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

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.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They’re bores.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

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

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

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

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

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.