Politics is like roller skating. You go partly where you want to go, and partly where the damn things take you.

The genius of the American system is that we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.

The pious ones of Plymouth who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their own knees and then upon the aborigines.

It lasted but a year of two, till all the routes were done. The pace so fast that most forgot that climbing could be fun.

Granting amnesty to people who broke the law penalizes the millions of people who are waiting to come to America legally.

Inflation is not all bad. After all, it has allowed every American to live in a more expensive neighborhood without moving.

Every technological advance we've made in the 21st century and throughout the 20th has come from the United States of America.

The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.

The American story is a story of immigration. I would be the last person who would say immigrants are not important to America.

Balancing the budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.

All over the world, people want to know what kind of people Texans are, and I explain that Texans are America's ideal Americans.

That wall, embodied in the First Amendment, is perhaps America's most important contribution to political progress on this planet.

It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne.

Running for president must be like having babies. You have to forget what it was like the last time before you want to do it again.

Primary revelation came through Jesus Christ, and I find it distasteful that additional divine finger prints should appear in nature.

We are told that this is an odious and unpopular tax. I never knew a tax that was not odious and unpopular with the people who paid it.

Then came a bigger fear. Not the threat of imminent injury, but the fear that if I didn't go back up, I would be a chickenshit forever.

Our job as Americans and as Republicans is to dislodge the traitors from every place where they've been sent to do their traitorous work.

An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary.

I believe I am more conservative than Bob Dole; I believe I am more committed to fundamentally changing American government than Bob Dole.

I have to tell you that the innovation and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the world still lies in the United States of America.

History makes the point time and time again No greater mischief can be created than to merge the power of religion with the power of government.

Our mission is to go after Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Right now, they are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. We should go after them wherever they are.

[It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require.

When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget.

Someone once said, 'Adversity introduces a man to himself.' For some reason, that's scary, but most people discover that adversity does make them stronger.

It's not fair to say that people who work with their head or with their hands ought to pay taxes, but people who earn their living with capital ought not to.

It is still an open question as to whether mankind or insects shall ultimately inherit the earth. It is my opinion that mankind ... has about a 50-50 chance...

If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life.

American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.

The democratic process on which this nation was founded should not be restricted to the political process, but should be applied to the industrial operation as well.

Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says "Bad war, good soldier." Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.

The reality is (Clinton's) so-called tax cut is basically giving money to people who largely don't pay taxes, so that it's really spending rather than a tax cut, ... This Week.

The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.

The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is based on the fact that there is no official religion.

Quite frankly, I think nothing could do more to immediately bolster national security then enabling us to produce more oil and gas here at home at a price consumers could afford.

Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, "I will protect another general who protects Communists," is not fit to wear that uniform, general.

While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.

I said we are in a mental recession. We keep getting the steady drumbeat of bad news... it's become a mental recession. We don't have measured negative growth. That's a fact, that's not a commentary.

I don't think there's any one definition, but to do effective political work you have to have vision and practicality, and learn how to persuade people that what you feel needs to be done does need to be done.

As they were during the Cold War, urban population centers remain the most likely targets of a nuclear attack. Now, however, an attack may come without warning from an unknown enemy, to achieve unclear motives.

The cap-and-trade plan is more market driven than anything else. If you want to discourage carbon use, you have to make it more expensive, but what is crucial is that this be a worldwide program that includes China and India.

The idea of being a foreign correspondent and wandering the world and witnessing great events, having adventures and covering the activities of world leaders, appealed to me greatly. It was a very glamorous life in those days.

Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down - they are truly down.

Government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals, as if he could do it better than themselves.

The whole of the Bill is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

I dont think just scaring people is enough. That worked during the freeze days to a major extent, but we really didnt achieve that much even at that time. You have to have more, you have to give people hope and a vision of a better world.

Unless you have a sense of values that's shared by people and turns them loose to do certain things on their own within those sets of values, the organization, whether a nation or corporation or citizen group, just doesn't work very well.

I don't think just scaring people is enough. That worked during the freeze days to a major extent, but we really didn't achieve that much even at that time. You have to have more, you have to give people hope and a vision of a better world.

There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters.

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