Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

Being president isn’t anything like reality TV. It’s not about sending insulting tweets or making fiery speeches; it’s about whether or not the candidate can handle the awesome responsibility of leading this country.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

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

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

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.

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

I have been in meetings where a head of state will say, ‚I like your tie,‘ to a man… or, ‚I like your country because the weather’s good,‘ or whatever. So for me, the pins in some ways were openers.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

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

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?

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

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

Kathleen Wynne and her band of radical-left cronies think they have a handle on what constitutes human identity and also what should constitute human morality. And I think that that’s being pushed in a manner in schools that’s completely reprehensible. It’s not education, in my estimation. It’s a form of indoctrination.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

If you want to occupy the C-suite or the top one-tenth of 1% in any organization, you have to be obsessively devoted to your career at the expense of everything else. And women look at that, and they think, ‚No.‘

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.