Main Page/Quotes

07:25 30 October 2024 UTC

“You know firemen... they always have to tell the guys, 'Don't break down the door because if you try the door knob, it's probably open.”
- Terry Crews, May 19, 2014

“Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor...”
- Gallup poll, Dec. 5-8, 2013

“Common sense, sometimes is worth a lot more than highly, highly sophisticated theories.”
- Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF, April 10, 2014

“Change is hard. Fixing what's broken is hard. Overcoming skepticism and fear of something new is hard. A lot of times folks would prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't... but today should remind us that the goal we've set for ourselves... that goal is achievable.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, April 1, 2014

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
- Pres. John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

“The whole government should be fired – make a change – a change is, get rid of the old and in with the new.”
- Sally Barnes-Breen, whose father-in-law died while waiting to get an appointment at the VA

“We need simple rules that everyone understands.”
- John Stossel, May 2014

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”
- Chinese proverb

“Every brand new start needs new beginnings.”
- Michelle Knight, commenting on her future after being freed from ten years of enslavement by a kidnapper. April 2014

“I've been to Harvard, I've been to Columbia, and there's a lot of dumb people out there...”
- Jesse Watters, Fox News, O'Reilly Factor

“People who receive bribes give rise to a feeling of disgust and cause the public to despise the state's institutions. The taker of bribes is like a traitor who betrays the public trust that was given to him - trust without which a proper public service cannot be maintained.”
- Judge David Rozen, Tel Aviv District Court, May 2014

“I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.”
- Ronald Reagan, October 28, 1980

“Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense.”
- Pres. Ronald Reagan, January 25, 1984

“If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?”
- Gerald Cohen, 2000 (book title)

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
- John Basil Barnhill

“If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it.”
- Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1858

“We American citizens are, basically, in a cold war with the 202 area code.”
- Rachel Maddow, July 25, 2014

“For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
- Aristotle, Politics, 384-322 BCE

“Where laws end, tyranny begins.”
- William Pitt, January 9, 1770

“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
- Daniel Webster, June 3, 1834

“It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”
- John C. Calhoun, January 1848

“Humans have a right to do what humans do. That's it. End of story. There's no argument, there's no exceptions. Humans have rights – they get to do what humans get to do. Case closed, good night.”
- David Letterman, April 3, 2013

“I think you have to renew the spirit of liberty and build on it and improve on it.”
- Ron Paul, August 3, 2014

“One of the best inoculators against terrorist infiltration is a society in which everybody feels as if they have a stake in the existing order and they feel that their grievances can be resolved through political means rather than through violence.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, August 6, 2014

“...absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.”
- John Jay, November 7, 1787

“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.”
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol II (1840)

“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it. ”
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol II (1840)

“'Vote early and vote often,' the advice openly displayed on the election banners in one of our northern cities.”
- William Porcher Miles, in a Congressional speech, March 31, 1858

“People spend twice as much on candy for Halloween than they did for the elections.”
- Peyton Craighill, on the campaign financing "problem". C-SPAN, November 9, 2014

“Long shots can change when people hear the ideas and your vision for the future.”
- Bernie Sanders, C-SPAN Newsmakers, November 9, 2014

“Any revolution anywhere in the world in the history of time, in the beginning, seemed hopeless.”
- David Letterman, November 13, 2014

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
- Emma Lazarus, from the sonnet, "The New Colossus", 1883

“If you still believe the same thing you believed 15 years ago, then you're a joke, you're a fossil.”
- Malcolm Gladwell, November 2014

“[In 2014] the economy improved and Washington had nothing to do with it — other than getting out of the way.”
- Major Garrett, CBS News; December 21, 2014

“With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

“Our government must be fundamentally reformed.”
- Carly Fiorina, January 24, 2015

“Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are.”
- Theodore Roosevelt, March 12, 1912

“Should parents be able to make the choice about measles vaccinations for their own kids?
This is a purely medical issue. Certainly you have to respect the parents and their need to do what's best for their children, but we hope that they make that decision based on solid scientific evidence ... there is a very, very safe vaccine [for measles].”
- Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, February 12, 2015

“What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today? Answer: Dissatisfaction with government.”
- Top answer from an open-ended question asked of the American people; Gallup, March 5-8, 2015

“[A house] built by corrupt builders is more likely to fall when it is stressed...”
- Manual of Structural Engineering and Earthquake Code Compliance, 1988

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Convention, June, 16, 1788

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
- James Madison, The Federalist #51, February 6, 1788

“Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.”
- Edmund Burke, 1780

“People never give up their liberty but under some delusion.”
- Edmund Burke, 1784

“Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst those sands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”
- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
- Edmund Burke, January 9, 1795

“On the one hand, I am pleased with where we are now relative to where we were, but the kinds of changes I think to drive us forward are going to take fundamental reform.”
- Henry Paulson, April 27, 2015

“There are all kinds of battles we have to fight, but we miss the forest for the trees if we don't also recognize that huge chunks of us citizens just give away our power. We'd rather complain than do something about it... Seize the power that you have. Make this democracy work.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, August 6, 2015

“There are so many out there right now who are trying to divide us – to create friction between all the factions of our society: a war on women; race wars; income wars; age wars; religious wars; you name it, there's a war on it... It is important for we the people of America to realize that we are not each other's enemies. The enemies are those who are trying to divide us. And if we can remember that, it will make a big difference as we go forward.”
- Ben Carson, August 28, 2015

“The favorite way of established industries to block an innovative competitor is to create a regulatory impediment to that competitor to enter the space... They find some sort of public safety argument or some other argument and they use it to create a road block that the innovator can't meet.”
- Marco Rubio, October 6, 2015

“We're living in a world right now that if we don't fix something, we're going to have a smaller and smaller percentage of people who are able to participate in this innovation and this wealth creation.”
- Salman Khan, June 30, 2015

“I will not put American troops on the ground in Syria.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, September 10, 2013

“Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin ... that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'”
- Presidential Daily Brief to Pres. Bush, August 6, 2001

“Having made peaceful change impossible, [he] made war inevitable.”
- John Kerry, Secretary of State, November 12, 2015

“It just proves to us again and again that human nature is not to be relied upon when people feel fearful.”
- Nitin Nohria, Harvard Business School Dean, commenting on increased bigotry after a recent terrorist attack, December 8, 2015

“Like everything else, we're going to have to work together across the public and private sector to come to a place which allows everybody to have what they want, which is: freedom on the internet, innovation on the internet, and safety so you can wake up in the morning and take your kids to school and go to work and dream your dreams and live full lives, which is what people want and they deserve all of that and we can have it all.”
- Ashton Carter, rejecting the idea that we need a "balance" that sacrifices a portion of our online privacy and security, March 18, 2016

“Education and middle class are the solutions, frankly. Over time, you need education and you need people to have a little bit of money in their pockets. If you're desperate you don't have a lot of choice. If you have no knowledge because you've been deliberately mis-educated by you're government, you're easily manipulated and just sort of take whatever you're given. Long term – it's education and economic empowerment.”
- Richard Engel, in answer to a question about unstable governments in the Middel East, February 16, 2016

“Sometimes the most important changes start in small places.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, March 22, 2016

“If we could simplify the tax code, it would be in everybody's interest.”
- John Koskinen, IRS Commissioner, March 24, 2016

“You know, many of these problems that we have, a lot of this is because nobody's talking to anybody.”
- Greta Van Susteren, May 10, 2015

“I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”
- Victoria Woodhull, Steinway Hall, New York City, November 20, 1871

“[Superdelegates] exist, really, to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
- Debbie Wassermann Schultz, February 11, 2016

“The Second Amendment was not for hunting. The Second Amendment was to shoot at tyrants if the government becomes tyrannical.”
- Austin Petersen, March 29, 2016

“I think it's always great when kids feel like they have some connection to politics or community that they can change.”
- Norah O'Donnell, May 4, 2016

“There are [workers] that can't work and can't find a job because technology has displaced them and so a society in some form or fashion has to take care of them... The alternative is unrest, put it that way, unrest – in some cases great unrest.”
- Bill Gross, May 25, 2016

“Police officers are guardians of this great democracy. The freedom to protest; the freedom of speech; the freedom of expression; all freedoms that we fight for with our lives. It's what makes us who we are as Americans.”
- Dallas Police Chief, David Brown, July 8, 2016

“Only by educating ourselves about liberty can we defend it.”
- Jeffrey Rosen, speaking on the legacy of Louis D. Brandeis, June 1, 2016

“The idea that if you don't vote you can't complain... Complaining is the most important American right. This is what we do. We complain. This is something that you can't lose the right to do no matter what.”
- Kathrine Mangu-Ward, August 17, 2016

“There is a lie being spread around and most of us are drinking the Kool-Aid. The lie says that all people are not created equal, the lie says that someone has to win and somebody has to lose, the lie says that God didn't create enough in abundance for all of human creation and all of creation period to live in harmony... the lie says that the government is not a servant of the people but the government rules the people...”
-Rev. Traci Blackmon, September 6, 2016

“Of course it's legal. It's a war. (chuckle) Until the war is over, anything's legal.”
- Rudy Giuliani, September 11, 2016 (when asked about taking Iraq's oil resources during the Iraq war)

“What works best is when you have a community-based decision-making process involving people of [all] parties, across racial, ethnic and religious lines, and even ideological lines.”
- Pres. Bill Clinton, September 13, 2016

“It shows you that the constituency for the Constitution... it shows you it's not this city, it's not the people who are doing all the talking and all the prevaricating; it's just the person camping out of the back of his motorcycle who wants to be left alone, who wants to enjoy his country, who wants to raise his or her family.”
- Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking in Washington, D.C. about his road trips across the country, October 27, 2016

“Commerce is the most essential component taking people out of poverty.”
- Bono, 2016

“For civilization to survive, the human race must remain civilized.”
- Rod Serling, September 29, 1961

“It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy, to embrace the joyous task we've been given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we, in fact, all share the same proud title – the most important office in a democracy – citizen.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, January 10, 2017

“I do worry about the use of labels in our civic discussion to sometimes ignore the underlying ideas.”
- Justice Neil Gorsuch, March 22, 2017

“Our constitutional watch does not cease merely because we have spoken before on an issue; when it becomes clear that a prior constitutional interpretation is unsound, we are obliged to reexamine the question.”
- Justice William Rehnquist, June 29, 1992 (505 U.S. 833)

“When things are that corrupt, when things are really just designed to benefit the criminal core at the top, it's very hard to build your country a diversified, stable, growing economy.”
- Rachel Maddow, on the Russian government, April 4, 2017

“Appreciating and valuing and defending the Bill of Rights is, I think, the patriotic duty of every citizen.”
- Judge Patricia Millett, D.C. Circuit Court, December 15, 2016

“Dictators in Iran and Syria butcher their people and threaten regional security. Russia and China prevent a response, and everyone asks, where does America stand?... Since World War II, the United States has had an answer to that question. We stand for free peoples and free markets. We will defend and support them.”
- Condoleezza Rice, Former Sec. of State, August 29, 2012

“Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of the law.’”
- Khizr Khan, in a speech critical of a candidate's proposal to ban Muslim travel to the US, July 28, 2016

“Democracies are not perfect. We are imperfect, but our message to the world – in many ways our best message to the world – is that you just get up every day and keep working to overcome those imperfections, and when you do that you get a chance to enjoy these amazing liberties.”
- Condoleezza Rice, Former Sec. of State, May 7, 2017

“The whole object of a free government is to allow the nation to redefine its purposes in the light of new needs without sacrificing the accumulated wisdom of its living traditions.”
- The President's Commision on Campus Unrest, September 26, 1970

“I do think that there is a certain amount of pressure exerted [on Congress] when there is an Article V movement at the grass roots level.”
- Rep. Ken Buck, April 13, 2017

“Why do we want to have a tax code that's so rigged? Don't we want to have a tax code that's simple and easy and fair?”
- Rep. Paul Ryan, November 9, 2017

“What they should have done was to eliminate all the exemptions and deductions and taken the rate all the way down...”
- Fmr. Gov. Judd Gregg commenting on a tax bill in Congress, December 8, 2017

“It doesn't matter what your challenges are as long as you're ready to try to overcome them.”
- Carly Fleischmann, June 30, 2016

“In this case, the President made and caused to be made false statements to the American people... [that] effectively delayed a possible congressional inquiry, and then he further delayed it by asserting Executive Privilege and refusing to testify for six months during the Independent Counsel investigation. This represents substantial and credible information that may constitute grounds for an impeachment.”
- Ken Starr (The Starr Report), Sept. 11, 1998

“This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, ‘My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

“The failure to address our long-term fiscal situation has increased the national debt to over $20 trillion dollars and growing. This situation is unsustainable, as I think we all know, and represents a dire threat to our economic and national security. ”
- Dan Coats, Dir. of National Intelligence, February 13, 2018

“We start talking about negative pregnancy, we use double-entendres, and throw in a little latin and a little of this. Why don't we talk in English? You know, that farmer in rural Alabama has a right to know what his Constitution says.”
- Justice Clarence Thomas, February 15, 2018

“I would like to see an equal rights amendment in our Constitution.”
- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, February 1, 2018

“A low-rate, broad-based flat tax is the sine qua non of economic prosperity.”
- Arthur Laffer, April 6, 2018

“I think the First Amendment needs a P.R. Campaign.”
- Jane Hall, Journalism Professor, American University, April 4, 2018

“I would rather work on a big problem and fail, than work on a lot of little problems and succeed.”
- Michio Kaku, March 9, 2018

“A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, August 16, 1967

“The Taliban offered some protection, they offered some security, some ability to protect the citizens from criminality. Well, what did we do? We brought in corrupt police, corrupt officials, who were the real reason before that the Afghan people went to the Taliban... As bad as the Taliban is, those Afghan peasants, those Afghan citizens preferred it to the Kabul government... the people that we saddled up to and were identified with.”
- John Sopko, June 6, 2018

“If you look at the history of our political division, we cyclically find times where we have terrible political division and something resets us.”
-Fmr. FBI Dir. James Comey, April 30, 2018

“Let's remember that Russia is an enemy and an adversary, continuing to attack our nation through cyber and social media, posing a direct threat...”
-Sen. Richard Blumenthal, July 1, 2018

“Let us hope that any constitutional amendments that come through the congressional process in the future are given the calm and careful attention that is needed to prevent errors, congressional or otherwise.”
-Henry Bain, Fall 2012

“We (American citizens) have no power over the Supreme Court.”
-Joshua Johnson, July 7, 2018

“The more (tax) exemptions you have, the higher the rates have to be.”
-Jason Sorens, Aug. 24, 2018

“The job of the people... is to amend the Constitution. It's not the job of judges to do that on our own.”
-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Sept. 5, 2018

“The Constitution is the contract that binds us together as a society. We don't always have to love everything that's in the Constitution, that's why there's an amendment process. We can fix it if there's something in it that we don't like. But we have to have agreement on some basic issues to have a government that functions and can be seen as legitimate by the people.”
-Dr. Chanley Rainey, Mississippi University for Women, Sept. 17, 2018

“Yesterday, I was talking to Rep. Jenniffer González Colón and she was telling me that they have prayer in the public schools. And I said, ‘Well, how did that happen?’, and she said, ‘Well, they said we couldn't have it and it went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said we couldn't have it... but we did it anyway.’”
-Ben Carson, HUD Secretary, Sept. 21, 2018

“Partly why this moment is so powerful and so fraught is that we have asked the Supreme Court to be the arbiter, the deciding point, for some of our most personal, passionate, powerful issues... issues that have been put onto the court that cannot be easily resolved in legislative processes...”
-Sen. Chris Coons, speaking about the problem of Congress deliberately abandoning its legislative role onto the courts, Oct. 2, 2018

“Eighty percent of the voters agree on eighty percent of the things, but the system is structured... not to reward working together.”
-Celinda Lake, speaking on the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2018

“The political system needs a revolution right now.”
-Doris Kearns Goodwin, Nov. 5, 2018

“There's a ton of research that shows people really respond negatively to lawmakers feathering their own nests and increasing their own power at the voters' expense.”
-Mike Wagner, University of Wisconsin, Dec. 9, 2018

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr., The Letter from Birmingham Jail, Apr. 16, 1963

“...as he was to be impeached by the other branch of the Legislature, and for any act which might be called a misdemesnor.”
-James Madison at the Constitutional Convention, objecting to the constitutional provision (which is now part of the US Constitution) that empowers the Senate to conduct impeachments and remove the president for virtually any reason that is proposed by the House, Sept 8, 1787

“...that cause [Confederate slavery] was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
-Ulysses S. Grant, 1885

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”
-Abraham Lincoln, April 4, 1864

“We have these heated, passionate exchanges of views precisely to avoid having to pull out guns or swords to have a duel. So when you shut down speech, you're basically inviting violence.”
-Allison Stanger, August 11, 2019

“He's a man of great scholarship and great character who's a poet; he's a man of great faith who practices, but he doesn't use his religion as a tool of divisiveness, but as a beacon to inspire humanity towards what any loving God would want — world peace.”
-Renée Zellweger, speaking of Jimmy Carter, September 25, 2019

“In the early days of our revolution Thomas Paine said, 'The times have found us.' The times found our founders to declare independence from a monarchy, to fight a war of independence, to win, to write our founding documents, and thank God they made them amendable so we could always be expanding freedom.”
-Nancy Pelosi, October 31, 2019

“We all have a role in the reconstruction of this country.”
-Susan Rice, November 23, 2019

“I know nothing about it other than what I heard last night. But obviously it would be a very serious matter for the United States if any country were to attempt to funnel funds to one of our parties for any reason whatever.”
-Pres. William Clinton, speaking about the Chinese government's attempt to influence the 1996 presidential and congressional elections, February 13, 1997

“The lesson is: don't start overthrowing governments with the idea that nothing could be worse. They'll always come up with something worse. Let's wait until we have a blueprint and we know where we're going before we start setting processes in motion.”
-Stephen Kinzer, speaking about the CIA-sponsored 1953 coup d'état that installed the Shah of Iran, January 11, 2020

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.”
-Anthoney Kennedy, June 26, 2015

“The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch!”
-Carl Bernstein telling Bob Woodward that Ford pardoned Nixon, September 4, 1974

“Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done. South Africa shows that is true. South Africa shows we can change, that we can choose a world defined not by our differences, but by our common hopes. We can choose a world defined not by conflict, but by peace and justice and opportunity.”
- Pres. Barack Obama, December 10, 2013

“If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States; that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality of condition.”
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol II (1840) -- 21 years before the Civil War