Main Page/Quotes

“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

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

“It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom – never.”
- Victor Davis Hanson, March 26, 2004

“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