What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social justice.

When an organization has more of its decisions made by committees, that gives more influence to those who have more time available to attend committee meetings and to drag out each meeting longer. In other words, it reduces the influence of those who have work to do, and are doing it, while making those who are less productive more influential.

"Because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook; well, I'm not a crook!"

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman... these allegations are false!"

Libertarians are anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.

Kim Stanley Robinson

"The world is more like it is now then it ever has before." -Eisenhower

Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.
~ Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

- Ronald Reagan

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."

"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."

-Thomas Paine

"Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power."

-John Adams

"Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor spirits who know neither victory nor defeat."

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1899."

However, this is the best political quote ever:-

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

- Winston Churchill, 4th June 1940.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

-Mark Twain

"With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there's one individual who's not being considered at all. That's the one who is being aborted. And I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born."
- someone very smart

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
-maybe the same person

"I am America...And so can you."

-Stephen Colbert

@speaker to Aliens - Winston Churchill's quote can't really be a contender for the best AMERICAN quote of all time.

Thank you Maniac.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. - James Madison

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

George Burns

@speaker to Aliens - Winston Churchill's quote can't really be a contender for the best AMERICAN quote of all time.

Well he was half-american you know. Mother born in Broklyn I believe.

May I have two please? One a Cree proverb and one from a Wahington President? Which one is which do you think?

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten

I will never apologize for the United States of America -- I don't care what the facts are.

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together" - Ike

"This country sucks" - Abraham Lincoln after killing Harvey Lee Oswald.

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem.
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States; 1985

Thank you Maniac, but I did say it was the best political quote, not merely an American political quote.

Thank you even more Fulhamish. I didn't know that.

Damn it - I hate been wrong! I did know that he had an american mother, but thought he wasn;t an American Citizen and then find out that he is one of only two people awarded Honorary American Citizenship during their lifetime.

No peaking at wikipedia - can you name the other?

"I cannot tell a lie... It was him!"

George Washington

\@ maniac, I had forgotten the honary citizen stuff likewise. Anyway if you are ever in London, may I recomend that you catch this place: http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms?
It has a very comprehensive section on the man himself warts (and there were many) and all.

This quote on taxation by John F. Kennedy is excellent.

"The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. I am not talking about a 'quickie' or a temporary tax cut, which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm, to ease some temporary complaint. I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last 5 years that our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."

TC are you advocating a return to the JFK tax rates?? I don't think the 1% will be too happy. Kennedy cut the top rate DOWN to 65%!! The current top rate is 39.6%. I think the top rate was 91% or 92% before he cut the tax rates...

If you want to talk Churchill quotes the best 2 are:

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

“Any man of energy and initiative in this country (America) can get what he wants out of life.... but when initiative is crippled by legislation or by a tax system which denies him the right to receive a reasonable share of his earnings, then he will no longer exert himself and the country will be deprived of the energy on which its continued greatness depends.."

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

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

@Kanosha - The Nancy Astor/ Churchill exchange is possibly mis-attributed - it had been attributed to David Lloyd-George earlier in response to a suffragette.

"Tettleton's Chew is a dumbass."

-Perhaps the Wisest of Us All...

"Fraternal feeling is possible in small groups, but when we try to regiment altruism on a national scale, the possibility of community is precisely what we give up."

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."

"Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don't have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does," -Senator Jon Kyle crowed.
The senator's response to his remark: "(it) was not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions."
~Does that prove that 76.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot?~

“there are always a few bad apples.”- Rod Blagojevich

"when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know?"-Herman Cain

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
― Stephen Tyrone Colbert

“I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”
― Stephen Tyrone Colbert

“The anti-liberal Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page is conservative, are both doing very well.”- Bill O'Reilly

"I can't prove it, but I can say it." - Stephen Tyrone Colbert (should be said by all politicians)

"The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries."- Barack Obama

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"- Bill Clinton

"Not only are we going to New Hampshire ... we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House, Yeeeeeaaaaaargh!"- Howard Dean