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

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I’m telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.

I’m not a big politics guy.

The idea that there is one kind of African is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue, for example, that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it.

Most businesses think that product is the most important thing, but without great leadership, mission and a team that deliver results at a high level, even the best product won’t make a company successful.

I have always been grateful to Colonel Longley. He proved to me that when people in authority take a stand, good can come out of it.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

What is politics? Political system is equal to development politics plus political politics.

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

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.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Everywhere I go I find that people… both leaders and individuals… are asking one basic question, ‚Is there any hope for the future?‘ My answer is the same, ‚Yes, through Jesus Christ.‘

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.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

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

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

Politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him when I arrive.

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

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

I’ve never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.