In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

The Democratic position seems to be everything is going to be free. Free education. Free health care. Free housing. Free love. Free kittens, I don’t know.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

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

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

Finality is not the language of politics.

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.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‚How is the president?‘

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.

Let me just be very clear that the Republican Party will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.

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

Most people don’t like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

I would rather drink weedkiller than support Obamacare.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

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

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

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.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

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

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

I’ve had some ‚riotous excursions of the human spirit‘ alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it’s time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way – they earned their stripes in combat.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Every first-term president has to learn something after he comes into office. Nobody can be completely ready for the inevitable crises.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

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.

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.

Whoever won’t fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.