It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

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

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.

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

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

Poverty is the mother of crime.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

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

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

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.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

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

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don’t have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don’t know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don’t know how much I pay in taxes.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Fortunately there is more wealth in the world than there was at the time of the global economic crisis of 1929 – Chinese, Indian, Arab and Russian.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.