What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

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.

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

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

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.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

I don’t write policy for my government.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

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

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

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 greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

We moralize among ruins.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

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

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.