Politics is the womb in which war develops.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

How can a president not be an actor?

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

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

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

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

You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.

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

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

I think Canadians are more interested in international events than Americans because it is such a small country, so politics affect it more.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

I would rather drink weedkiller than support Obamacare.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

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 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.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else’s affairs.

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

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

Man becomes his most creative during war.

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.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

It was the Congress that imposed ‚Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,‘ it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

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.

War settles nothing.

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.

Politics… have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

There are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they’re not implemented fully, because the U.S. won’t allow it.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

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.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State, which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations.

In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.