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

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

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

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

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Politics have no relation to morals.

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.

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

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

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.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

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.

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

Man is by nature a political animal.

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

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

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

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

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

Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

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

A week is a long time in politics.

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

War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

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.

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

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

Under every stone lurks a politician.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

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.

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

The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary.

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

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

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

'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.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

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

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

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