True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

I must have read every issue of ‚Punch‘ published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour – that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like ‚Three Men in a Boat.‘

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

It’s nice to say let’s be bipartisan. But we’re a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

It feels kinda weird being back in a high school cause I haven’t been in a high school for about a year. So um, it’s kinda interesting coming back, and y’know seeing the lockers, with all the signs, the handmade signs, so being in high school again is a little bit strange but in a good way.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

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

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is. And there is no way to hide who they really are.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

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

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.

You cannot mix sports with politics.