Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs' true cost the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem not as a matter for the criminal justice system.

I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.

Politicians also have no leisure because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself power and glory or happiness.

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.

Life in general has never been even close to fair so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues it has three choices: It can raise taxes print money or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians all three options are bad for average Americans.

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

Certainly it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising there's obviously a lot of deception.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who's not doing a good job. But I didn't make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.

We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud solid reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.

Deficits mean future tax increases pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.

America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom.

To be fair lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections.

When you become famous you start getting invites to parties where there are famous athletes and famous rock stars politicians people who have tremendous power and affluence. It's not in my DNA but certainly I have been exposed to it.

I like photographing the people I love the people I admire the famous and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

I'm an actor I'm not a politician. I always kick myself when I talk too much about family or personal things.

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way government gets bigger and you become less free.

It's important to ask candidates about their beliefs in part because politicians frequently exploit religious faith - often with the idea that voters will be more likely to unthinkingly accept certain political positions so long as they arise from religious belief.

Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.

The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.

You can almost see voters nodding their heads at home: The public's faith in politicians and political institutions has been on a steep and dangerous decline for decades because elected leaders fail to deliver.

I have experienced failure as a politician and for that very reason I am ready to give everything for Japan.

From my experience politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.