Yup, the whole birther movement was racist.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

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.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

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.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

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.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

Politics has always been ugly to me, and yet I accept that as a fact of life.

And I think it’s that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That’s the only way you can get elected.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

I have a reputation for taking on governors a lot more powerful than me.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I’m telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

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

Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we are going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

I haven’t been very active in politics.

It’s not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It’s who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Finality is not the language of politics.

I think Canadians are more interested in international events than Americans because it is such a small country, so politics affect it more.

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

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.