You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

I like being a writer.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

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.

Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life.

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

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Freedom is not enough.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

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

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

My shows are not narratives.

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

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

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

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

The idea that putting Americans ‚first‘ requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens.

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!

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

I haven’t been very active in politics.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.

Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

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.

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.

Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove – disapprove of their point of view.