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

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Politics is the art of the possible.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!