First 5 Presidents Quotes & Sayings

An earthquake strikes Haiti, and care packages from America are among the first to arrive - and not far behind are former Presidents Clinton and Bush. — Mitt Romney

Presidents generally do what they are good at in their first four years, then spend their second term responding to the agendas imposed upon them by events. — Dick Morris

Our planning system was dynamite when we first put it in. The thinking was fresh; the form mattered little. It was idea oriented. We then hired a head of planning, and he hired two vice presidents, and then he hired a planner; and the books got thicker, and the printing more sophisticated, and the covers got harder, and the drawings got better. — John Welch

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian. — Mortimer Adler

Several of the first presidents, including Jefferson and Madison, generally refused to issue public prayers, despite importunings to do so. Under pressure, Madison relented in the War Of 1812, but held to his belief that chaplains shouldn't be appointed to the military or be allowed to open Congress. — James Madison

Presidents often disappoint, but first ladies rarely do. — Kitty Kelley

You want ass? The cash is first.
You got dead presidents, baby, I got a hearse in my purse. — Roxanne Shante

Obama achieved something in his first year with health care that successive presidents have been unable to achieve. — Tina Brown

In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place. — Charlie Pierce

In the past, in order to continue as a candidate, a serious candidate, you had to be in the top three finishes in Iowa. You had to be in the top two out of New Hampshire. All our presidents elected in the past half-century finished either first or second in New Hampshire and in the top three in Iowa. That changed with the Citizens United, when we gave unlimited amounts of money. — Mark Shields

When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags. — Gore Vidal

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. — John Adams

Trying to assassinate the president should not be funny. It really shouldn't. It's not like I was cracking up when we read about Lincoln or JFK. But let's face it, they were real presidents. Gerald Ford ranks right up there with Millard Fillmore and Bush the First on the list of unexciting white men who have run this country, made their way into history books, and otherwise been human sleeping pills. If all the presidents had been television shows, Gerald Ford would probably have been a PBS fund drive. So I'd bet the fact that anyone would try to kill Gerald Ford, Gerald Rudolph Ford, was kind of hard to get excited about, even back in the day. — Alison Umminger

The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first few presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it has been maintained ever since. Though much is selectively derived from Christianity, this religion is clearly not itself Christianity. ROBERT BELLAH1 — Gregory A. Boyd

Presidents and prime ministers, whether they live in the rich or the poor world, are insulated and isolated from the devastating impact of global poverty. They read the statistics, but they rarely witness at first hand the misery and degradation of life on a dollar a day. — Jonathan Dimbleby

Midterm elections for first-term presidents are notoriously difficult. — Tim Kaine

At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill. — Robert Dallek

The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right.

I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had no national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage. — Calvin Coolidge

There is a distressing but not uncommon condition of presidents and other world leaders known as Worrying about Africa. It is usually picked up overseas as at summit meeting on world poverty or disease, and symptoms include painful twinges of guilt over the discrepancy between First and Third World wealth, uncomfortable feelings somewhere below the stomach that perhaps unfettered capitalism is not the benevolent force for good we are constantly assured it is, and frequent attacks of calling for Something to Be Done. The best remedy is invariably a stiff dose of domestic crisis. — Nicholas Drayson

I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things. If there were, they were concealed from me too. And if there were, well I wouldn't be the first American president that underlings have lied to, or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere, hiding these dark secrets, even from elected presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me ... and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I did (chuckling) try to find out. — William J. Clinton

The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic. — Barack Obama

All presidents but Jefferson have argued that their first job was to keep us safe. All presidents but Jefferson were wrong. If you read the Constitution, you will see that the President's first job - as Jefferson understood well - is to keep us free. — Andrew Napolitano

I find as I grow older, I love those most, whom I loved first. — Thomas Jefferson

I want to kill the president because I no like the capitalists. I have the gun in my hand, I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists. — Giuseppe Zangara

(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I've seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it, Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency? — E.A. Bucchianeri

Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency. — Rick Perlstein

If either one or two candidates is dominating the field at the time of the first primaries and caucuses, the voters are superfluous because the victor is already guaranteed. If, however, no candidate is dominant, then the primaries and caucuses will determine the winner. Nonetheless, in recent campaign cycles, that determination has been made earlier and earlier in the process, by fewer and fewer voters, who pick from only a few candidates - the ones who have not already eliminated themselves from serious contention by their weak performances in the pre-primary phase. — Roger Lawrence Butler

Abraham Lincoln wasn't much of a dancer. "Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you in the worst way," he told his future wife. Miss Todd later said to a friend, "He certainly did."

"John Quincy Adams was a first-rate swimmer. Once when he was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River, a women reporter snatched his clothes and sat on them until he gave her an interview."

"(Andrew Johnson couldn't read until he was fourteen! He didn't learn to write until after he was married!) — Judith St. George

People made a big deal out of the fact this is the first time a sitting president has done a late-night show. We tried to have other presidents on, but President Bush went to bed every night at 9:00. And President Clinton always seemed to have other late-night plans. — Jay Leno

Friends, we have now won ... I say to Aymaras, Quechuas, Chiquitaos, and Guaranis: for the first time we are going to be presidents. And I want to say to businesses, intellectual professionals, and artists: do not abandon us. — Evo Morales

Since 1775, when the first Continental Congress called for a national day of prayer, there have been such events called for by almost every President. I saw the figures - 34 out of 44 Presidents have called for a national day of prayer. Some of those who didn't have died in office. — James Dobson