“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process.

The constitution is an instrument, above all, for LIMITING the functions of government.

We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. “L.B.J.” should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.

Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.

History has to judge every man who served. I don’t know how they’re going to treat me. I may be the worst S.O.B. that ever came down the pike. But I won’t lose any sleep over it. I just like to be remembered as an honest person who tried.

The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.

If you don’t mind smelling like peanut butter for two or three days, peanut butter is darn good shaving cream.

My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.

The big thing is to make this country – quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay. You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. They’re American citizens.

Perserverance. . .that’s been the story of my family.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.

I’m the most underdog underdog there is.

After one of his [Hubert Humphrey] long-winded harangues I suggested he had probably been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century-Fox.

I certainly believe in aliens in space, and that they are indeed visiting our planet. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities.

I will offer a choice, not an echo.

I got drunk in Canada. I was there for 2 days but I was drunk there for 4 days. I don’t know how it worked. I guess it was with the time difference or something.

You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion… different temperaments… differences in the capacity to comprehend.

All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what’s inside of all of us.

I have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.

In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there now. I can’t seem to get over that line.

The difference between mercy and grace? Mercy gave the prodigal son a second chance. Grace gave him a feast.

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.