Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom - and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

A week is a long time in politics.

Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

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

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Good government is good politics.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.

I know I'm not supposed to have any opinions about politics, because I'm famous.

Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

Politics have no relation to morals.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

People say satire is dead. It's not dead; it's alive and living in the White House.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom - and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power are.

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.

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

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows - marriage does.

I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.

Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.