It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

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.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

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

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

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

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

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.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

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.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

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.

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 natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

This young century will be liberty’s century.

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.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

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

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

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

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

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

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.

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.

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.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be ‚Citizens United.‘ I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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.

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.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

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

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

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.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

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

A Constitution should be short and obscure.

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

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

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.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.