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

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.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

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