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

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

I’ll assure you this: I will have nothing to do with politics.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it… You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

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.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

I have something in common with Nazis in that I am opposed to the radical Left. And when you oppose the radical Left, you end up being a part of a much larger group that includes Nazis in it.

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

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!

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

War is a contagion.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.

I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

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

Unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country’s energy plan, or endanger our coastlines, or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors… I mean it.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

We have the best government that money can buy.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.