I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.
Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics it is everything.
One of the big changes in politics has been because families individuals have felt worried insecure... worried about the economy worried about their jobs worried about their kids' futures... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.
You realize that for all the shenanigans that go on in the big circus of politics everybody wakes up and goes to work.
Skip the religion and politics head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.
The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate consultant pundit and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.
Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics but it's awful policy.
When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed in the face of every constitutional convention only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent scurrilous wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.
Everything is politics.
Everybody in America is soft and hates conflict. The cure for this both in politics and social life is the same - hardihood. Give them raw truth.
The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out do not vote or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.
In politics every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.
In every country today there is politics. It may be authoritarian politics but there is politics.
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe and which mean very little.
I can't let important policy decisions hinge on the fact that an election is coming up every 90 days.
Your every voter as surely as your chief magistrate exercises a public trust.
The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it but somebody always does.
I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.
Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.
Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.