Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

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.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the ‚my way or the highway‘ approach that was evident in the previous eight years.

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.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

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

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

Obama himself has been highly supportive of Mubarak.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

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.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

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

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory… And why not? Victory is good for you, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

We are all the President’s men.

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

I try to lead by example, being conscious of others and being responsible.

I came to America to teach my method – not to enter a research experiment.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

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.

One man with courage is a majority.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

Unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country’s energy plan, or endanger our coastlines, or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.

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 somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

I filed the MSRB Reform Act, along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Doug Jones, because the board that oversees the muni-bond market is too secretive and too incestuous. Its membership shares the same DNA. That means the rulebook for municipal bonds is in the hands of a board that resembles a revolving door of longtime industry confederates.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

America is not just a country, it’s an idea, and real Americans are getting busy.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.

There’s a common perception among college administrators that they should conceal the high level of sexual assaults that take place on their campuses because it would bring discredit to the university, bring them a bad name if it was publicized.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.