He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled

We are living in a world where moral climates have no atmosphere.

If you stand up for your rights you’ll be criticized, put through the ringer, dragged into court, arrested, pepper sprayed, sucked into an overcomplicated, Rube Goldberg bureaucracy the mistakes of which become your mistakes and...

Somehow, we’ve managed to create a social, cultural and political environment in which even our youngest citizens have been so deeply indoctrinated to hate. Who else, I wonder, have we indoctrinated them against? Little Muslim...

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s...

It’s not just tougher out there. It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if...

Don’t write in to ask whether I would prefer Gingrich to Clinton. Ask, rather, whether Clinton prefers Gingrich to you. Go triangulate yourself.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I wanted people to know that we fired rounds into moving trucks and open windows to survive, not for anyone else’s freedom. Not for the Democrats. Not for Republicans. Just to survive.

Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect...

The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it’s going to bother you…and then, the worse things get.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men… and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious...

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

A lot of lip service gets paid to being honest, but no one really wants to hear it unless what’s being said is the party line.

As so often happens in politics, what appears to be politically expedient for those in power rarely overlaps with the public interest. The lesser evils of the regime become entrenched, while the greater good is...

Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He’s not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced....

[Rumsfield’s] reply included a complex formulation that would become inextricably associated with him: ‘There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are...

In a world of full of manipulation, half-truths and lies, the conspiracy theory is often a safer bet than the official story.

In der internationalen Politik geht es nie um Demokratie oder Menschenrechte. Es geht um die Interessen von Staaten. Merken Sie sich das, egal, was man Ihnen im Geschichtsunterricht erzählt.

Insider trading is a serious crime. Do you know what the penalty for doing it is? Nothing, if you’re a member of Congress.

You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests.

The actual results of political diplomacy can openly be seen in critical moments. Turkey can insist on leading a very successful foreign policy, however, the acceptance of the fact of the Armenian Genocide by any...

In India, qualified honest people have to follow the instructions of unqualified dishonest people. Thus, the system in India is poor and hence India is still poor.

For some twenty years the window that opened at the end of the Cold War has been allowed to hang flapping in the wind. It is high time that the five nuclear-weapon states take seriously...

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant...

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

I suffer from tennis elbow. It’s an old masturbating injury from when I was training to go into politics.

Kill all the prisoners, because they’re costing us too much money. Wait! No, kill all the politicians, because they’re spending too much money.

Mr. Shit gives politicians a good name. It’s the rest of the politicians who give Mr. Shit a bad name.

You vote Democrat even if you vote Republican, because they’re two sides of the same coin. So stop flipping that coin. The illusion of controlling the outcome of the coin toss is why we’re all...

My love is three times as deep as you voted for. You thought it was two feet deep, but it’s six feet deep, like a grave.

I put all my eggs in one basket, and then I jizzed all over them. I’m a natural politician.

I sympathize with a mother who has three mouths to feed—especially if two of those mouths are on her face. With a woman like that I’d listen twice as hard for doublespeak. I’m pretty accustomed...

I bought it and threw it away. Why? Because I paid for it. The only thing better would be if taxpayers purchased it. I should be a politician.

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I...

Because my family has no money, I’ve decided to become a prostitute. That’s right, I’m going into politics.

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

True politics cannot take a single step without first paying homage to morals, and while politics itself is a difficult art, its combination with morals is no art at all; for morals cuts the Gordian...

I don’t do ‘black music,’ I don’t do ‘white music’…I make fight music, for high school kids.

It’s just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there’s some of both.

When the Holy Father passed away in 2005, Laura, Dad, Bill Clinton, and I flew together to his funeral in Rome. It was the first time an American president had attended the funeral of a...

The challenge has always been that “good people” don’t know how to win elections

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

Grammar is politics by other means.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Only victors have stories to tell,we the vanquished were then thought ofas cowards and weaklings whose memoriesand fears should not be remembered.

Being on the left is a no-brainer. You don’t have to do anything to be on the left. You just have to keep your mouth shut and go along with the crowd.

International Relations are too important to be left to the specialists.

Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians’ jobs… When the government sees its people...