Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008-9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons.

I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I have a reputation for taking on governors a lot more powerful than me.

When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, our island was a true Yankee colony. The United States had duped and disarmed our Liberation Army. One couldn’t speak of developed agriculture, but of immense plantations exploited on the base of manual and animal labour that in general used neither fertilizers nor machinery.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

NATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

There’s not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.

I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.

I can’t go out with a Republican.

The fundamental question I believe is, ‚Is political Islam in our best interest?‘ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?

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.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

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

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

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.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Human self-understanding changes with time, and so also human consciousness deepens.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

India has to be transformed into a developed nation, a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

I think governments can’t do much.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

I was born in Europe… and I’ve traveled all over the world. I can tell you that there is no place, no country, that is more compassionate, more generous, more accepting, and more welcoming than the United States of America.

Every time I hear a politician mention the word ‚stimulus,‘ my mind flashes back to high school biology class, when I touched battery wires to a dead frog to make it twitch.

‚Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.‘ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.

Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing.

There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.

The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as ‚failed states.‘

From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

A lot of churches have not moved with the times.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

Russia isn’t going to start a war. They can’t afford it. I think Mr. Putin can be dealt with if we stop screaming at him. You can work with the guy. You just have to know who he is.

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

There are three constants in life… change, choice and principles.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.