"Jefferson wanted very small government. Obama is the opposite – he wants government to take care of you, a government that runs virtually everything."

"There is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment."

"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."

"Gingrich: It's not an insulting comment."

"Colmes: — that's a very insulting comment —"

"Gingrich: What's your — what's your — why? Why is it astounding?"

"Colmes: That's an astounding comment —"

"Gingrich: Yes."

"Colmes: — comparing them to those who enabled Hitler?"

"Gingrich: Look—"

"Alan Colmes: You're calling "appeasers" people who disagree with the Bush policy administration —"

"On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:"

"I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the camp fire, but are lousy in politics."

"This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family."

"I'm willing to lead, but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals."

"I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much."

"This is petty…You’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you, and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp…You just wonder, 'Where is their sense of manners? Where is their sense of courtesy?'"

"There's something that doesn't fit about this whole case and the way it's been handled…I'm not convinced he didn't [commit suicide]. I'm just not convinced he did. I believe there are plausible grounds to wonder what happened and very real grounds to wonder why it was investigated so badly."

"It is impossible to maintain civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS and with 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can’t even read."

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

"People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil around me every day."

"You’re gonna see weird things coming out of this city over the next few years, because you’re watching the death throes of the machine, and you’re watching its power to smear, and its power to intimidate. And the next time you hear anyone say, ‘Let’s fire Lee Atwater,’ the first thing you ought to know is…they are either left-wingers or they have been intimidated by left-wingers."

"The values of the left cripple human beings, weaken cities, make it difficult for us to in fact survive as a country…The left in America is to blame for most of the current, major diseases which have struck this society."

"The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument."

"The left-wing Democrats will represent the party of total hedonism, total exhibitionism, total bizarreness, total weirdness, and the total right to cripple innocent people in the name of letting hooligans loose."

"If Wright ever consolidates his power, he will be a very, very formidable man…We need to take him on early to prevent that."

"I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I'm doing it. Ronald Reagan uses the term 'opportunity society' and that didn't exist four years ago. I just had breakfast with Darman and Stockman because I'm unavoidable. I represent real power. And I can also, as an elected official, I can hold a press conference and that's a form of real power. The ambitions that this city focuses on are trivial if you're a historian. Who cares?"

"The only explanation I can give myself for spending two hours here is that one or two or three of you will become leaders, as a result of a slightly better understanding of what the term means. The first thing it means is taking risks. Because all of you, if you try to do anything, are going to make mistakes. That shouldn't bother you, because Lyndon Johnson, when he was forty years older than you, made mistakes and destroyed his presidency. Richard Nixon, when he was forty-five years older than you, made mistakes and destroyed his presidency. Jimmy Carter makes mistakes on a daily basis. None of those things should worry you, that's the nature of this business. We're all human and we all goof."

"There were long periods in my marriage when I was in enormous pain, and I did a lot of things during that time that reflect how much pain I was in. I am not going to argue every point of that story, but I will say that it painted a picture of me that is essentially untrue."

"I'm the guy in the eighth grade who did not go across the floor and ask the girl to dance for two reasons. One is, she might say no and I'd be embarrassed; two, she might say yes and I'd have to dance…"

"You can have an active, aggressive, conservative state which does not in fact have a large centralized bureaucracy…This goes back to Teddy Roosevelt. We have not seen an activist conservative presidency since TR."

"Everyone of you is old enough to have been a rifleman in Vietnam. A number of you are old enough to have been platoon leaders, or company commanders, depending on the situation, and how rapidly you move up in rank. This is the same business, we're just lucky, in this country, we don't use bullets, we use ballots instead. You're fighting a war. It is a war for power."

"I see myself as representing the conservative wing of the postindustrial society."

"Endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified); the nation’s various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically."

"As military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes, “endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified); the nation’s various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically.”**Patriotic Dissent: How a Working-Class Soldier Turned Against “Forever Wars”, by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, CounterPunch, (24 July 2020)"

"From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. Within a decade, a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed anywhere except the Greater Middle East."

"You know, we live in a country where if you want to go bomb somebody, there's remarkably little discussion about how much it might cost, even though the costs almost inevitably end up being orders of magnitude larger than anybody projected at the outcome."

"As it dragged on, the Iraq War exposed as hollow any American aspirations to global hegemony. Left behind when U.S. troops finally withdrew was their reputation for military supremacy. Meanwhile as reports of prisoner abuse, torture, and the killing of noncombatants mounted, American moral confidence lost its luster."

"In this way, the bravery of the warrior underwrites collective civic cowardice, while fostering a slack, insipid patriotism."

"In its quest to control an unruly world, the Pentagon — acting in the name of the American people — slices and dices that world into smaller and smaller segments, while neglecting to assess the actual costs and benefits of the persistent meddling that it terms engagement."

"The way a nation wages war — the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights — testifies to the actual character of its political system."

"War is an unvarnished evil."

"Call it habit or conditioning or socialization: The citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order questions about the fundamentals of national security policy."

"For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors."

"The U.S. has become a de facto one-party state, with the legislative branch permanently controlled by an incumbent's party and every president exploiting his role as Commander-in-Chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office."

"We are squandering our wealth in many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom."

"In war-as-spectacle, appearances could be more important than reality, because appearance often ended up determining reality."

"To the extent that libraries wish to offer unfiltered access, they are free to do so without federal assistance."