The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

I won’t eat anything green.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

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.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

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.

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.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government.

Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city’s food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

It sure is hell to be president.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

When I came to Delhi and noticed an insider view, I felt what it was, and I was surprised to see it. It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It’s a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them.

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’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

We are all the President’s men.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.