Being A President Quotes & Sayings

Hinson hasn't taught a class in decades, but still likes the moniker. Retired on a single patent back in the twenties, then had one VC hit after another across the Valley. He's a DARPA leech, loves being around politicians. Would probably have aspirations of being President if it weren't for the legions of coeds who would come out of the woodworks with stories. "SoCal — Hugh Howey

The United States, the President said, "must be a force for good." Americans focused on "good." Much of the world focused on "force," on being handled. — Ron Suskind

We know that this man has a proven record of being a 'strict constructionist.' Our President has given us his word that he will interpret the Constitution rather than make new laws from the bench. — Rod Parsley

The point being we used to have a system that wasn't as rigged in how the tax structure functioned. The president [Barack Obama] and I have been trying to get rid of some of these loopholes for some time. Look, we have to change the corporate culture. — Joe Biden

President Obama's election has taught us to stop being paralyzed by excuses and given us a floodgate of hope. I'm more daring and going after things that I once thought were not possible. — Tasha Smith

If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees. — John Cornyn

Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days. — Julianna Baggott

Is America ready for a black president? Well, I say we just had a retarded one. When did being black become a bigger deterrent than being retarded? — Chris Rock

Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one. — Herbert Hoover

And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide. — Peter Kenyon

As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them. — Tench Coxe

The writings of latter-day prophets clearly teach that the sorrows and sufferings endured by Adam and Eve upon their leaving the Garden of Eden were ordained by God and were a necessary part of their-and our-earthly experience. President Howard W. Hunter, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught: "We came to mortal life to encounter resistance. It was part of the plan for our eternal progress. Without temptation, sickness, pain, and sorrow, there could be no goodness, virtue, appreciation for well-being, or joy." — Daniel K Judd

There's a screen direction in the script for the pilot where it says, 'Jim Harper, mid-20s, enters,' and it said something to the effect of: 'He's confident without being cocky. He has no idea that he could be considered attractive, because he saw All The President's Men when he was thirteen and never looked up.' It was just a great little gem of a screen direction, and I felt immediately from just that, that I had a good idea of how to play this guy. — John Gallagher Jr.

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule ...
Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

They'd run all these tests on him and decided he wasn't racist. He wasn't, either, but not because he thought about it particularly. He just couldn't see the point. It just made for a lot of hassle, being that way, so why be that way? Nobody was going to go back and live where they lived before, were they, and if they did (he vaguely suspected) there wouldn't be any Mongolian barbecue and maybe we'd all be listening to Pentecostal Metal and anyway the President was black. — William Gibson

In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly. — Nicholas Von Hoffman

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current President ... Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been ... I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him. — Jack Cafferty

There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run. — Barbara Bush

President Coolidge said, 'I don't want the Government to go into business.' Well, if I was Mr. Coolidge I wouldn't worry over that. The Government never has been accused of being a business man. — Will Rogers

Whatever it took to get elected president of the United States, I don't think being a complete and utter moron is one of those predicates. — James Woods

The elder Bush explained later that "watching your son taking a pounding from his critics was much, much harder" than being president. "Barbara quit reading the papers and watching the new, but I couldn't do that — Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy

or the need for a Trump 2012 presidential campaign ("This is what I've been waiting for my whole life, a president who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying asshole!"), — Chris Smith

Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy. And what I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there's classified and then there's classified. There's stuff that is really top secret top secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom or, you know, going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source. — Barack Obama

In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary. — Jodi Kantor

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president. — Henry Louis Gates

The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist. — Ann Coulter

There are many famous people who could read extremely fast. It was said that England's Samuel Johnson could read almost as fast as he could look at the pages. While in the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt used to read a book every day before breakfast, and he occasionally read three a day. John F. Kennedy was well known for being able to read 1,200 words per minute. — Peter Kump

And if his youth was obvious, the Glorious Cause was to a large degree a young man's cause. The commander in chief of the army, George Washington, was himself only forty-three. John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, was thirty-nine, John Adams, forty, Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, younger even than the young Rhode Island general. In such times many were being cast in roles seemingly beyond their experience or capacities, and Washington had quickly judged Nathanael Greene to be "an object of confidence. — David McCullough

Being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be president. — Fred Thompson

Sarah Palin has already had an effect on foreign relations ... The new president of Pakistan, Ali Zardari, is in hot water, because last week, Sarah was on a class trip to New York, where she met foreign leaders ... And one of the leaders she met was Zardari, and he was gushing over her. He said, oh, you're more gorgeous in person than you are on TV. And so the people in his home country of Pakistan, the Islamists, they issued a fatwa on him, for being too 'flirty.' And when Sarah today was told that Zardari had gotten a fatwa because of her, she said, 'I know, I felt it when he hugged me.' — Bill Maher

Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. — Herman Melville

As Bob Dole found out, you can't keep a positive image while being your party's mouthpiece in Congress. That's why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president. — Dick Morris

The truth of the matter is one knows what it's like being the president. Not I, nor any president to come hence. This is because life, thankfully, offers deeper quandaries. While in office, I would often wake up in a daze, wondering how I could wiggle my toes without even thinking it so, or why hair grows only on certain places and not our entire bodies, or why we aren't completely bald, or why we must close our eyes and sleep every night, or any of the millions of particulars of daily existence, let alone that I was elected the leader of an entire nation. — George Washington

President Obama , I guess, is starting to confess to some of his anxieties. In a recent interview, President Obama said, 'I miss being anonymous.' He said, 'In the old days, I could blend in with all the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.' — Conan O'Brien

My biggest problem with President Bush is when we were in kindergarten together, he broke my favorite red crayon! Since that moment, my psychiatrist told me that I haven't been able to move forward as a person. Severely hindering the chances of me being able to mature any since that tragic day. For that, I'll never forgive him. — Carolyn Parrish

I enjoyed being president, but the campaign against Guinea worm [horrible disease] has opened up a completely new career that is challenging and unpredictable and adventurous - and very gratifying. — Jimmy Carter

President John F. Kennedy's Cigars
On February 7, 1962, President Kennedy announced to his staff that he needed some help finding as many of the prestigious Cuban Petit Upmann cigars as possible. He let it be known that he would like to have 1,000 of these cigars by the next morning. Being the President of the United States, his wish was granted when, on the morning of February 8th, his Press Secretary Pierre Salinger came in and deposited 1,200 cigars on Kennedy's desk. Smiling, Kennedy opened his desk, took out a document and signed it, banning importation of all Cuban-made products into the United States. Some years later when asked about that moment, Salinger said that there were actually 1,201 cigars. — Hank Bracker

[President George W.] Bush - never mind his well-crafted set speeches; listen to him as he leans on a lectern, chatting to an audience of carpenters - is completely comfortable being himself, a skill still eluding Gore in his 55th year. — George Will

President Obama's FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has a reputation in D.C. of being a 'tepid' regulator. From reports of his net neutrality proposal, he's living up to that reputation. — Marvin Ammori

If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner. — Barack Obama

Well, then he would be at war with the government, and death was an unfortunate side effect of any revolution. Change always had a price tag. But once he took over, the people would realize he was a better ruler than the disorganized, self-interested mob that called themselves Congress
men who didn't know anything, being led by a president who knew even less. — C.J. Hill

From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today's dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent. — Robert B. Reich

There is no basis to say I'm being coy about running for president. If I chose to explore the presidency, I wouldn't do it in a backward way. I'll say, 'I'm exploring the presidency.' — Mario Cuomo

I had a recurring fantasy in which I took (Rudy Giuliani) out during a press conference (it was nonlethal, just something that put him out of commission for a year or so), saving America from the horror of a President Giuliani. If that sounds like I had some trouble being 'objective,' I did. — Michael Hastings

As an Independent, she has no party backing ... Her being the first Independent president trumps the fact that she's a woman. It causes even more upheaval in Washington than her being female. — Geena Davis

I'm not looking to be anyone's vice president. I looking to be the president of the United States. Or, I'll be a private citizen, there's nothing wrong with being a private citizen. — Marco Rubio

Being president is as difficult as writing the perfect poem. And being president is as effortless as writing the perfect poem. Always a Reckoning, my first collection of poetry, was described by Booklist as 'keenly evocative.' — Jimmy Carter

As Donald Trump was campaigning for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 he was asked, "Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?" He replied, "I'm not sure I have. I just go and try and do a better job from there. . . . If I do something wrong, I think I just try to make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't."1 He created quite a stir among many religious people, so he tempered the comments a few days later. But I think he was being honest, and his comments reflect the way many people feel: in theory they believe in the forgiveness of sins, but the concept doesn't really apply to them. Standing in stark contrast to this view is one articulated by twentieth-century existentialist theologian Paul Tillich, who once said, "Forgiveness is an answer, the divine answer, to the question implied in our existence."2 — Adam Hamilton

Others felt that their question had already been answered in the minds of other group members, and if they asked the question, it would be considered a dumb question, and they would be put down as being stupid or not going along with the group. Because people did not ask questions, people lost lives when the Titanic sank, when the Challenger crashed, when President Kennedy authorized a covert attack on the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. — Michael J. Marquardt

President Cuyler made a speech this evening about the modern generation being flippant and superficial. He says that we are losing the old ideals of earnest endeavour and true scholarship; and particularly is this falling-off noticeable in our disrespectful attitude towards organized authority. We no longer pay a seemly deference to our superiors. — Anonymous

On Wednesday, April 9, 1969, Bush, who was just beginning his second term as a congressman, flew to see the former president at LBJ's ranch at Stonewall, Texas, about 220 miles from Houston. "Mr. President, I've still got a decision to make and I'd like your advice," Bush said. "My House seat is secure - no opposition last time - and I've got a position on Ways and Means. I don't mind taking risks, but in a few more terms, I'll have seniority on a powerful committee. I'm just not sure it's a gamble I should take, whether it's really worth it." "Son," Johnson said, "I've served in the House. And I've been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they're both good places to serve. So I wouldn't begin to advise you what to do, except to say this - that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit." The former president paused. "Do I make my point? — Jon Meacham

Once he became president, George [H.] Bush revealed a vein of Styrofoam and no matter how deep he tried to go, he always ended up bobbing on the surface. His inaugural speech was like being present at the death of language ... — Kate Clinton

One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine. — A.J.P. Taylor

The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about and thrust his chest out; never did a man of the robe stick out his neck so far, not even one who has just hanged a man. — Marquis De Sade

He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate. — Sinclair Lewis

Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder. — Mark McKinnon

As far as being a Republican is concerned, I come from a place, New York City, which is virtually, I mean, it is almost exclusively Democrat. And I have really started to see some of the negatives - as an example, and I have a lot of liking for this man, but the last number of months of his brother's administration were a catastrophe. And unfortunately, those few months gave us President Obama. And you can't be happy about that. — Donald Trump

New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that Canada! Where's your nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named Steven Harper, and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named Barack Hussein Obama! — Bill Maher

I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties. He is not the legitimate president. This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown. — Ken Livingstone

HST: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?
McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to--because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public--they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for. — Hunter S. Thompson

The American president increasingly used his influence to create conflicts, intensify existing conflicts, and, above all, to keep conflicts from being resolved peacefully. For years this man looked for a dispute anywhere in the world, but preferably in Europe, that he could use to create political entanglements with American economic obligations to one of the contending sides, which would then steadily involve America in the conflict and thus divert attention from his own confused domestic economic policies. — Adolf Hitler

I don't want my president to be a TV star. You don't have to be on television every minute of every day - you're the president, not a rerun of 'Law & Order'. TV stars are too worried bout being popular and too concerned about being renewed. — Bill Maher

A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back ... The nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit ... As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon. — Keith Olbermann

Well, we're just a couple of weeks from new President Barack Obama being sworn in. And he's been very busy naming a lot of cabinet positions. And today he announced that he wants the surgeon general to be TV Dr. Sanjay Gupta. That was the kid on 'American Idol,' wasn't it? — David Letterman

I have complete confidence in - in Secret Service. These guys and gals are unbelievably professional. They know what they're doing. And I basically do what they tell me to do. Now, sometimes I - I'm the first one to admit that it chaffs a little bit being inside this bubble. It's the hardest adjustment of being president, not being able to just take a walk. — Barack Obama

As far as other important people go, university president Richard Levin believes "there are many ways to contribute to the well-being of society, and there are many forms of public service." He rejects the notion that "people who choose a business career aren't interested in being public-spirited," asserting that "what's outstanding about Yale graduates is that whatever career they choose, they end up being active participants in the civic life of the communities in which they live. — Marina Keegan

Well, human rights defenders, freedom of speech advocates, lawyers that we spoke to said this is really an expansion. After the military ouster of Egypt's unpopular, but elected Islamist president in 2013, we saw political opponents being arrested by the thousands, really. Then we saw a popular comedian go off the air out of fear of retribution. — Leila Fadel

He [John F. Kennedy] might have envisioned himself being "alone, at the top" but, like Woodrow Wilson, he would find out that not even a President moves free of human entanglement, human needs, human illusions; not even a President can be independent of those around him. — Tom Wicker

People are being really picky about the upcoming election. I read that Americans do not want the next president to be a first-term senator, be over 65, or have a former president in the family. Then the Secret Service said, 'Hey, whoever slips through slips through. No promises.' — Jimmy Fallon

Let me explain something you already know. I'm from Texas and we understand the nature of a border. From what I've seen, vigilant Texans are being ordered to stand down and allow criminals to pass. Mr. President, prepare to see Texans ignoring those orders. — Tommy Lee Jones

When a man touches a woman's body, he is not just touching her body. It goes MUCH DEEPER than that for a woman. He is touching parts of her soul-parts as diverse as how she feels about being a grandmother some day, to what is her favorite ice cream, to how much she loves her pet, and to her opinion of how the current President is governing. The man wants a sexual encounter and love is far from his mind; she desires permanence, commitment, safety, and security. — Jim Anderson

The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home ... What I think we know - separate and apart from this incident - is that there is a long history in their country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact. - President Obama on Gates' arrest. — Barack Obama

I like being president because i get a cool house — Barack Obama

Imagine a German as president of the European Commission. If he or she goes to some particular country and says do this or that, it won't be very well received. The president quickly ends up being the evil German. But if the president is elected by and controlled by 700 representatives from all EU countries, that legitimizes him or her in a very different way. — Martin Schulz

If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it's the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act. — Michael Bloomberg

Garret went across the street to the library. There was a hole in the sidewalk the size of a bathtub. Construction was being done, was always being done. It was the journey that mattered, Garret thought woozily, the getting-there part. The mayor, and then the president, had begun saying that. "And where are we going?" the mayor had asked. "When will we get there? What will happen to us once we get there?" He really wanted to know. — Tao Lin

I am Preachers little girl. And I'm gonna be just like him when I grow up. I'm gonna have a Fatboy but I want mine to be sparkly and I want a pink helmet with skulls on it. And instead of being the club President, I'm gonna be the club Queen cuz I'm gonna marry the biggest, scariest biker in the whole world and he's gonna let me do whatever I want because he's gonna love me like crazy. — Madeline Sheehan

Accomplished a bit more for Bush than for Gore only because there were more question marks for Bush. I think he established that he possesses at least the minimum qualifications for being president. — Stuart Rothenberg

Against the onslaught of consumerism, against all the overwhelming siren voices that beckon, our only weapon is to exercise our right to choose. And to make the right choices, we need to be able to think, to reflect, to pause, to imagine, because what is being sold to you is not just toothpaste or deodorant or a bathroom fixture, but your next president or representative, your children's future, your way and view of life. — Azar Nafisi

I don't want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally decline in their lives. That's not my motivation. I have a lot of cool things to do other than sitting around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and being compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that. If you want somebody who has a heart for people, who can fight for people, and can fix these things, then there are a couple other people, and I believe I'm the best one. — Jeb Bush

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them. — Natalie Goldberg

I don't intend to spend my morning being lectured to by a president whose failed policies have put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt. — Jeff Landry

Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening — Mark Yudof

While the President [Barack Obama] did a good thing when he said he personally supported equal marriage, he then quickly backed away and said that he wasn't going to do anything about it - that it was a state matter, and that he wasn't going to interfere, as opposed to being than being a real advocate for equality across the board in marriage. He also, I think two weeks prior to that statement, refused to sign an executive order to establish equal rights in the workplace for the LGBT community. — Jill Stein

Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening. — Bill Clinton

You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about. — Barack Obama

US Vice President Joe Biden gave the US government's real view of its regional and Syrian allies with undiplomatic frankness when speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on October 2. He told his audience that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. — Patrick Cockburn

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat. — Kevin Costner

This is what I've been waiting for my whole life. A President who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying a**hole. — Lewis Black

He was a great president in his first term; in his second term, he wasn't the same Grover Cleveland he was to begin with ... Cleveland reestablished the presidency by being not only a chief executive but a leader. — Harry S. Truman

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

There are some days when history is made. Yesterday was one - and I was honoured to be in Washington to watch Barack Obama being sworn in. During his soaring inaugural address, the new president gazed over a teeming National Mall that was crowded with more than a million people. — Des Browne

Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me. — Jack Nicholson

It didn't seem to matter that Reagan made his heartfelt endorsements of traditional family values despite being divorced and so alienated from his own children that one of them would write a book about what a rotten father he had been; by the same token, the president's failure to have made regular or even occasional visits to church hardly dimmed his appeal for the resurgent religious right — Douglas Brinkley

Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do. — George W. Bush

Latin America is very fond of the word "hope." We like to be called the "continent of hope." Candidates for deputy, senator, president, call themselves "candidates of hope." This hope is really something like a promise of heaven, an IOU whose payment is always being put off. It is put off until the next legislative campaign, until next year, until the next century. — Pablo Neruda

Within the first few months I discovered that being President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed. — Harry Truman

President Bush's approval ratings have taken somewhat of a dive. A senior slump, if you will. Leading President Bush to one conclusion: He is the only one who realizes what a great job he's being doing. — Jon Stewart

It's interesting how Obama's adorers in the press keep comparing him to Lincoln and Reagan. Apparently they can't think of a Democrat president worthy of being compared to. — Ann Coulter

Now, being a POW certainly doesn't qualify anyone to be President. But it does reveal character. This is the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of history have sought in their leaders. — Fred Thompson