Government cannot provide values to persons who have none, or who have lost those they had. It cannot provide inner peace. It can provide outlets for moral energies, but it cannot create those energies.

The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men.

If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.

Secrecy is for losers.

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.