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

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

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.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

There’s always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It’s long since passed that a typical person doesn’t leave footprints.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we’ve got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

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

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

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

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

My next baby will be my new record.

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

I live in Puerto Rico, my family lives in Puerto Rico, my friends. What happens in Puerto Rico matters to me.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

Who’s my hero? That’s a great question… Well, I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

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

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

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing.

I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.

I grew up around lots of men – my father, my brothers, my uncles – so I wasn’t intimidated by them.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

How can a president not be an actor?

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.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

Democracy passes into despotism.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England – you couldn’t have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

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.

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

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

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, ‚Will you all just shut up!‘ And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, ‚What are you doing?!‘ I was like, ‚You better get up here! I don’t play the fighting games.‘

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream.

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

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

I am just happy to be part of the Nike family.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

People do not make wars; governments do.