My Democratic friends just can’t accept the fact that the American people chose Donald Trump to be president – it’s called democracy. My advice to them, and I say this gently: Fill out a ‚Hurt Feelings Report‘ and let’s move on.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.

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.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

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

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

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

I’m glad I can’t vote.

Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the – he said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules – unchain Wall Street. They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of like character which have originated in this government have been adjusted.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Political courage is not political suicide.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

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.

All the blood is drained out of democracy – it dies – when only half the population votes.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.

The idea that putting Americans ‚first‘ requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens.

Trump is a national disgrace and an international pariah.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

The FBI should not be a political body.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

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.

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

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.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.

I am such a political person.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.

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.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.