The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

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

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

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.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Warren Buffett is famous for talking about the ‚intrinsic value‘ of stocks. But while many people parrot this phrase, few know what it really means.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

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

Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.

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.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

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

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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 art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

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

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.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

The majority of my interactions with police were not good. There were a few good ones who were actually protecting the community. But then you have ones from the Valley. They never met me in their life, but since I’m a kid in basketball shorts and a white T-shirt, they wanna slam me on the hood of the car. Sixteen years old.

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

I’m interested in movement, and I’m interested in money, and I’m interested in the movement of money.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.

I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people’s trust in their government.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

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!

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

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

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

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

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

I can remember when I first went into the Himalayan area way back in 1951. Money, for instance, was not important at all to the local people. But now, finance has become just as important to them as it is to us, and this is a change maybe not for the better.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

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.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

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.

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

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

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

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

‚Getting smart on crime‘ does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

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.

When President Obama speaks about raising taxes on the rich, he speaks about high-income employees and small business owners, not entrepreneurs who build big businesses.