In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities – which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

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.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

2018 is an incredibly important election year, not just with the important midterms here in the U.S., but you just had the Mexican elections. You have Brazil. You have India coming up at the beginning of next year. There’s an assortment of elections around the EU. We’re very serious about this. We know that we need to get this right.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

All the blood is drained out of democracy – it dies – when only half the population votes.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

I don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

Rappers aren’t the really rich ones. We all have nice houses with studios and cars, but you need a piece of someone’s business to be super wealthy.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.