Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

It’s time to stop thinking of the Republican Party as an exclusive club where your ideological card is checked at the door, and start thinking about how we can attract more solution-based leaders like Nathan Fletcher and Anthony Adams.

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

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

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested.

Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

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

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

Politics have no relation to morals.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

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

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?

A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

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

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.

People forget… that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that’s what happened.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

In our age there is no such thing as ‚keeping out of politics.‘ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance.

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

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I haven’t been very active in politics.

I’m more than comfortable just sitting back and scoring 21, 22 points or whatever and getting 10, 11 assists whatever the case might be. More than comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of the pieces that you have around you and what you can do to elevate everybody else.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

Better a broken promise than none at all.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

If people wonder, yes, Hillary Clinton is my friend. She has been a friend to me and Barack and Malia and Sasha, and Bill and Chelsea have been embracing and supportive from the very day my husband took the oath of office.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.

You go back to the 17th century, the commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.