Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

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 am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.

And now, of course this is another thing I didn’t count on, that now as the governor of the state of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

People like to talk about war.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

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.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

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.

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

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‚If only Islam would have a Reformation‘ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.

Children are all foreigners.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.

The government argues that First Amendment rights are outweighed by the need to prosecute those who transmit classified information and documents.

I’m just telling you, God permits things in our lives sometimes for reasons that we do not understand yet because of the spiritual level that we’re on. We can’t have any understanding of it, because we’re not at a place of spiritual growth yet where we understand the deeper things of God.

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

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

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

If I had chosen the populist course, it would have been a breach of the trust placed in me by the people.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president – and the president alone – who always makes the final call.