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?

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Let me just be very clear that the Republican Party will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton.

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

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

Look, when you’re the president, there’s all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it’s just the nature of the job.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

One of the roles of the Presidency is to lead a political party. Having a President in office is usually a huge advantage to a party because it gives the party a mouthpiece and an advocate at the highest level.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.

It sure is hell to be president.

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

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

The Democratic position seems to be everything is going to be free. Free education. Free health care. Free housing. Free love. Free kittens, I don’t know.

The facts tell us that no religious Faith releases – or ever has released at any moment in History – a higher degree of warmth, a more intense dynamism of unification than the Christianity of our own day – and the more Catholic it is, the truer my words.

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.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

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

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

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.

I don’t write policy for my government.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

And frankly, I don’t understand – I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat – but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

I had just as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats when I ran for president. But I should have organized the Democratic Party to get me re-elected.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

Political courage is not political suicide.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It’s a marathon.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

I think, under President Obama, who was a really bright guy – I didn’t agree with a lot of his politics – but we got to the point internationally where our friends didn’t trust us. They were confused. And our enemies didn’t quite respect us.

We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.