The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

The sun doesn’t always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

Our greatness has always come from people who expect nothing and take nothing for granted – folks who work hard for what they have, then reach back and help others after them.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

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

Read my lips: no new taxes.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

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.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

Money does not change people, people change.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I’m not like that I never shoot blanks.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

Some people are jerks, and some people aren’t.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

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

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.

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.

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

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

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.

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

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

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.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

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.

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.

I’ve been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.