Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

 —Mark Twain

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

—Harry Truman

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

—Abraham Lincoln

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

—Niccolo Machiavelli

People expect Byzantine, Machiavellian logic from politicians. But the truth is simple. Trial lawyers learn a good rule: “Don’t decide what you don’t have to decide.” That’s not evasion. It’s wisdom.

 —Mario Cuomo

No one has a finer command of the language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

 —Sam Rayburn

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

—George Burns

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

 —Winston Churchill

It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been, for the most part, either an outsider, a servant, or a scapegoat.

 —Richard Hofstadter

Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of government, is on the high road to permanent glory.

 —Molly Ivins

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

 —Thomas Jefferson

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.

 —John W. Gardner

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says the government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.

—P.J. O’Rourke