Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Building new roads and bridges creates jobs. Growing our exports creates jobs. Reforming our outdated tax system and our broken immigration system creates jobs.

A financial institution has the task of taking risks, and if it’s a well run institution – say, Goldman Sachs – it tries to cover the potential losses to itself, but only to itself.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

The FBI should not be a political body.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

That government is best which governs least.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

We are all the President’s men.

I like money, but it’s never been about the money.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

In the middle of a recession, where we’re just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

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

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They’re bores.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It’s not, and nor should it be.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable – even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.

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

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That’s a statement in and of itself.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

I’ve never been that much of a money guy. I’m more of a film guy, and most of the money I’ve made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.

It isn’t enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, ‚How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?‘

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we’re getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best: We’re making things again.

We Conservatives hate unemployment.

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.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

I am such a political person.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.