Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

Being brought up very religious, I have a fear of people that look to idol gods.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

I have not endorsed Trump and will not do so.

Trump has no sense of shame.

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

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

Look, when you’re the president, there’s all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it’s just the nature of the job.

About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

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 got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

I think Hillary Clinton is a phenomenal woman, and I’ve gotten to know her, and I think she’s made some pretty major contributions over the course of her life.

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration… that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

I delayed my father’s funeral because of cricket.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

I don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable.

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

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.

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

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

In a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

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.

There’s only one person in this race who will be there, who’s always been there for you, and that’s Hillary Clinton’s life story.

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.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

It’s nice to say let’s be bipartisan. But we’re a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

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