In the 21st century, the countries that thrive will be the ones where citizens know their voices will be heard because the institutions are transparent.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

I’ve got nothing to hide.

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

I think there’s every reason this 21st century will be much happier.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

The key is to vote because we need a vote to put the people in power that we want to represent us.

You know you’re not anonymous on our site. We’re greeting you by name, showing you past purchases, to the degree that you can arrange to have transparency combined with an explanation of what the consumer benefit is.

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

The problem with EMMA is that it is cost prohibitive for the small investors who were supposed to benefit from the new transparency.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is. And there is no way to hide who they really are.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

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.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

I’m glad I can’t vote.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern. But what is the best that we can offer to those who govern? Prayer!

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

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

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

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