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.

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

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right?

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

When you bring in multi-brand retail items into the country, you’re not just bringing the products, but you’re also harming local manufacturers.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

Babylon is everywhere. You have wrong and you have right. Wrong is what we call Babylon, wrong things. That is what Babylon is to me. I could have born in England, I could have born in America, it make no difference where me born, because there is Babylon everywhere.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good. I cannot wash my hands, eh? We all have to give something!

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

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.

You cannot mix sports with politics.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.

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.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

Politically there were failures. And also on the personal level, there were tremendous failures.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.

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.

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

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

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

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

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

So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we’ve got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

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

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.

It was the Congress that imposed ‚Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,‘ it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

America is just downright mean.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.