Presidential Quotes & Sayings

A lot of factors go into choosing a vice-presidential nominee. — Marco Rubio

The imperative need of this nation at all times is the leadership of Uncommon Men or Women. — Herbert Hoover

Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That's been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance. — Robert Dallek

The man who can look upon a crisis without being willing to offer himself upon the altar of his country is not for public trust. — Millard Fillmore

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days. — Juan Williams

I came to see soldiers as men willing to lay down their lives for the sake of others. They fight for themselves and the generation under immediate attack, but certainly they fight for the futures of free peoples. Decades beyond World War II, I am one who benefited. That I can vote in presidential elections and not bend my knee to Hirohito's grandson is testament to the enduring work of the veterans of World War II. That I can write books for a living instead of sweating in a Third Reich factory is a product of Allied triumph. — Marcus Brotherton

Presidential coverage used to be a very serious endeavor. — Nina Easton

Hiro and Chuck grab the closest thing they can find to a corner table. Hiro
buttonholes a waiter and surreptitiously orders a pitcher of Pub Special, mixed
half and half with nonalcoholic beer. This way, Chuck ought to remain awake a
little longer than he would otherwise.
It doesn't take much to make him open up. He's like one of these old guys from
a disgraced presidential administration, forced out by scandal, who devotes the
rest of his life to finding people who will listen to him. — Neal Stephenson

An attitudinal sea change. I think that's the hardest one to fix. Presidential directives, bills, provisions can all be rescinded, repealed, amended, but attitudes linger. The hardest thing is going to be to try to reverse an attitude, a bunker mentality that equates secrecy with either security or heightened efficiency and that regards transparency as an invitation to mischief and trespass. This default position of operating in the shadows is going to be somewhat appealing to whomever inherits office. — Ted Gup

Allegations that President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich partly in return for donations to his presidential library have raised questions about the value of such institutions and the federal appropriations that support them. — Robert Dallek

I work really long hours and work a lot and have done press tours and junkets, but there is nothing like a presidential campaign that I have experienced before ... I think at one point we visited three different cities in one state in 12 hours. It's exhausting. — America Ferrera

I'm pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don't see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I'm petrified of being wrong. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Somebody has inquired as to whether I will be going to the opening baseball game. I hope to have that pleasure. — Herbert Hoover

One hundred thirty years after Abe Lincoln, re Republicans have got the anti-black vote and it's bigger than any Democratic Presidential candidate can cope with. — John Updike

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. — James Q. Wilson

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. — Juan Williams

Tipping confounds me because it is not a reward but a travel tax, one of the many, one of the more insulting. No one is spared. It does not matter that you are paying thousands to stay in the presidential suite in the best hotel: the uniformed man seeing you to the elevator, inquiring about your trip, giving you a weather report, and carrying your bags to the suite expects money for this unasked-for attention. Out front, the doorman, gasconading in gold braid, wants a tip for snatching open a cab door, the bartender wants a proportion of your bill, so does the waiter, and chambermaids sometimes leave unambiguous messages, with an accompanying envelope, demanding cash. It is bad enough that people expect something extra for just doing their jobs; it is an even more dismal thought that every smile has a price. — Paul Theroux

From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it. — Mark Shields

As a kid, I had the worst mile time ever. Our gym teacher made us run the mile a few times a year for something called the Presidential Fitness Test. I'd huff and puff and wonder why the hell President Bush cared how fast I could run laps around the playground. I always came in dead last. — Miranda Kenneally

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Hucka-BS is attacking actress Natalie Portman for getting pregnant without being married. It could get a little awkward if he runs into Sarah and Bristol Palin at Fox News. — Jay Leno

Presidential campaign getting kind of ugly, did you hear about this? Yesterday, a 27-year-old woman came for to deny rumors that she had an affair with Democratic front-runner John Kerry. The woman added, 'I would never cheat on Bill Clinton.' — Conan O'Brien

[If the Democratic nominee turns out to be] Walter Mondale, I hope he picks Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. It would be a desperate move, but that's what it'll take to get rid of Reagan. Ms. Ferraro is no more unqualified than a lot of Vice Presidential candidates have been, and anyhow Mondale's in good health. — Hendrik Hertzberg

The idea that I should become President seems to me too visionary to require a serious answer. It has never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any other person. — Zachary Taylor

To the new president, Abraham Lincoln: Sir, if on attaining the presidency you are as happy as I am upon leaving it, then, sir, you are a happy man indeed. — James Buchanan

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne. — John Podhoretz

The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys or girls, is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls (unless the victims are, in fact, little girls and not grown women). Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will find not one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: 'We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain; and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth. — Susan Jacoby

Senate Democrats blocked President Obama's trade bill yesterday because they're worried it could hurt jobs. It's not an issue for Republicans, since they've all found work as presidential candidates. — Jimmy Fallon

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production. — Herbert Hoover

The administration of George W. Bush, emboldened by the Sept. 11 attacks and the backing of a Republican Congress, has sought to further extend presidential power over national security. Most of the expansion has taken place in secret, making Congressional or judicial supervision particularly difficult. — Noah Feldman

In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California's Commonwealth Club, was asked if he'd like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment - the sort that has since taken place - and he replied, "I think it would be a great tragedy ... if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line." He continued, "I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion." Therefore, "when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people. — Jeffrey Frank

I have commenced my auspicious reign and am in quiet possession of the Presidential Mansion ... this winter I intend to do something in the way of entertaining that shall be the admiration and talk of all Washington world. — Julia Gardiner Tyler

I heard this today and I thought this was fascinating and interesting. President Bush has two daughters, two beautiful daughters, and they may work on their father's presidential campaign after they get out of college and I thought, well, that's a pretty good move because in this economy, they won't be able to find real jobs. — David Letterman

I'm not sure Lincoln would fare well if he were a presidential candidate today. — David Herbert Donald

This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite," she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall.
well, even presidents get shot," I said.
I was just going to say that myself," she said, smiling. "But I didn't want to scare you."
I didn't know whether this was interesting
that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing
or even whether it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin's Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true, that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep private way? Or was it just a random obviousness shared between strangers? The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet. An exfoliating narrative, my professors would probably say. The paratext of the possible. — Lorrie Moore

Bush had expertise in one thing: How to run a Presidential campaign. He understands campaigns and Presidential politics. He has no interest or disposition or I think probably - he's not stupid, but he's not bright, he's not a rocket scientist - he isn't interested in policy. — John Dean

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch. — Helen Thomas

For among nations - as within nations - the soundest unity is that which respects diversity, and the strongest cohesion is that which rejects coercion. — Richard M. Nixon

It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest that he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states. — Martin Luther King III

How much leeway do you think any president has? Seventy-five percent of what he does is dictated by circumstance, no matter what. So don't sacrifice an opportunity to be at the seat of power, friend. To hold a piece of that power in your own two hands. Just because you don't like the cut of a man's coat. — Michael Davidow

As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal. — Camille Paglia

Working on your biceps? Try chopping down a cherry tree. — George Washington

I enjoy biographies and whatnot. I'm also a fan of presidential libraries. I've visited quite a few of them, especially the more modern ones. — David Mandel

What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices. — Richard M. Nixon

The terror and the consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever lived a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will.
- In "Selected Civil War Letters of Edwine Willow", edited by Constance Mays — George Saunders

Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election. — Joseph Sobran

Come now. let us reason together. — Lyndon B. Johnson

As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all. — Richard M. Nixon

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

It was a long, difficult summer of 2004. That was a leap year, so several things happened - the Olympics and presidential election. And right in the middle of the election campaign - and I don't think this was an accident - the 9/11 Commission delivers its report. — Michael Hayden

Trustworthiness is the thing that you need the most going to a presidential election. Honest and trustworthy is one of the main questions in any presidential election. — Dana Perino

During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections. — Martin Scorsese

Our forms of government - though both cast in the democratic pattern - are greatly different. Indeed, sometimes it appears that many of our misunderstandings spring from an imperfect knowledge on the part of both of us of the dissimilarities in our forms of government. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The contest, " said Pott, "shall be prolonged so long as I have health and strength, and that portion of talent with which I am gifted. From that contest, sir, although it may unsettle men's minds and excite their feelings, and render them incapable for the discharge of the every-day duties of ordinary life; from that contest, sir, I will never shrink, till I have set my heel upon the Eatanswill Independent. I wish the people of London, and the people of my country to know, sir, that they may rely upon me; - that I will not desert them, that I am resolved to stand by them, sir, to the last. — Charles Dickens

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies. — Alfie Kohn

The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting. — John Hodgman

[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections. — William Gibson

Every election, a presidential candidate inevitably proposes a new cabinet agency. The idea is that this is the only way to solve a particular problem. Just create more government. — Christopher Buckley

I have a job to do ... If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me. — Chris Christie

Unfortunately, the greater consciousness among Whites about Black equality has not carried over to the new victims of racism - Muslims and Immigrants. There is no racial enlightenment for these groups, which are huge. Millions of Muslims and an equal number of immigrants, who whether legal or illegal, face discrimination both legally from the government and extra-legally from White Americans - and sometimes Black and Hispanic Americans. The Democratic Presidential candidates are avoiding these issues in order to cultivate support among White Americans. — Howard Zinn

If you're a guest [at my $113 million house], you'll be able to call up on screens throughout the house almost any image you like - presidential portraits, reproductions of High Renaissance paintings, pictures of sunsets, airplanes, skiers in the Andes, a rare French stamp, the Beatles in 1965. — Bill Gates

How should we Democrats select the next presidential nominee? Smoke filled rooms? Brokered convention? National primary? Personally, I prefer jump shots from the top of the key. — Bill Bradley

Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another. — P. J. O'Rourke

Everybody loved me running for president in '91 and '92 because they never knew a presidential candidate before. — Eileen Myles

I had a moment in the Library of Congress among the presidential papers. I opened a folder, and there was an envelope in it. The front of the envelope was facing the table, so I didn't know what was in it. I opened it and out spilled all this hair. I turned the envelop over and it says, 'Clipped from President Garfield's head on his deathbed.' — Candice Millard

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted. — Ann Coulter

(Harry Reid) was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one. — Harry Reid

Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly. — Richard Engel

A presidential candidate's great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn't mean they are utterly insincere. — Robert Dallek

You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends on whether they fear you. It's as simple as that. — Richard M. Nixon

No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men. — Herbert Hoover

Our social and economic system cannot march toward better days unless it is inspired by things of the Spirit. It is here that the higher purposes of individualism must find their sustenance. — Herbert Hoover

Freedom requires that government keep the channels of competition and opportunity open, prevent monopolies, economic abuse and domination. — Herbert Hoover

We got a lot of energy. She certainly doesn't look presidential to me, Hillary [Clinton]. I don't think you get to look less presidential actually than Hillary. — Donald Trump

As you can imagine I'm disappointed as anything that I was not selected to be the presidential running mate. And I find it continually appalling that it would be a radical thing to have a woman on the ticket. — Kate Clinton

In addition to being extremely expensive, and we have to put up with the stupidities that the candidates repeat, it's really being decided elsewhere who will sit in the presidential seat. — Subcomandante Marcos

During the Democratic presidential debate Howard Dean started off by apologizing to the crowd for having a cold. Then John Kerry apologized for once having a cold while serving his country in Vietnam. — Conan O'Brien

When a guy gets elected to the Senate or the governor's mansion, he wakes up the next morning and says to himself, 'You're presidential material,' — Geraldine Ferraro

If you don't feel something strongly you're not going to achieve. — George W. Bush

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I read the book [My Life by Bill Clinton] completely. And I think it compares very favorably with Ulysses S. Grant's gold standard of presidential autobiographies. — Dan Rather

Above all, tell the truth. — Grover Cleveland

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race. — William Howard Taft

A political life, I've often said, is a continuing education in human nature, including one's own. My involvement on the ground floor of two presidential campaigns and my duties as First Lady took me to every state in our union and to seventy-eight nations. In each place, I met someone or saw something that caused me to open my mind and my heart and deepen my understanding of the universal concerns that most of humanity shares. — Hillary Clinton

The 2007 Labor campaign was the most presidential in Australian history, with a slogan - Kevin07 - exceeded in its banality only by its success. — Richard Flanagan

Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway. — Ozzy Osbourne

On the issue of Iraq, it is my hope, and my challenge to my colleagues, that our debate will be based on what is best for the future of our nation and for Iraq, not what's best for a political party or presidential campaign. — Mitch McConnell

Mitt Romney has won the 2012 presidential nomination by promising Republicans that he would end a so-called 'culture of dependency' on welfare - welfare defined as 'free stuff' and food stamps for poor folks, not tax breaks for Big Oil or tax shelters for Bain executives. — Christine Pelosi

To understand what's happening in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, you need to know what's going on in the year 2024! Soundscape: Where hearing is believing. — Royce Flippin

That tank," Bucktooth pointed at the gas gauge on the dashboard of the decidedly unfredneck-like '65 Dodge Dart, "is almost empty. We ain't going much farther."
"Indeed it is." A solemn Phosphate agreed. "I suggest we stop the car and weigh our options."
"What options?" Professor Buckley asked. "Why do-that is- we've been traveling up and down this path for over an hour without seeing anyone or encountering anything. Even the doughnut shop cannot be relocated. In light of this, what options do we have?"
It was difficult to argue with the ex-history teacher's typically alarmist position. Brisbane's reliable old automobile had indeed been expending its remaining fuel supply in what seemed to be a hopeless effort to exit the unnamed dirt path. After leaving the doughnut shop and the blonde presidential descendant who worked there, they'd been unable to find DeMohrenschildt Lane again, or any other side street. — Donald Jeffries

Boxing, jiu-jitsu, scaling the Matterhorn ... I did cardio before cardio was cool. — Theodore Roosevelt

All that harms labor is treason to America. — Abraham Lincoln

The first and most essential quality of a presidential candidate, as Averell Harriman once pointed out, is that he should lust for the job - he should want it more than all things, with a passion surpassing all emotion and probably even all principle. — Theodore H. White

Jeb Bush announced today on the Internet that he may run for president. The next presidential election could be Bush vs. Clinton. It will be like 1992 all over again except I won't be in rehab. — Craig Ferguson

The Founders' armor had resisted every attempt by others to force them open; the Senate had been designed as the "firm" body; it had become too firm - too firm to allow the reforms the Republic needed. Never had the dam been more firm than during the last decade, the decade since the conservative coalition had learned its strength. During that decade, despite the mandate of three presidential elections, it had stood across and blocked the rising demand for social justice, had stood so solidly that it seemed too strong ever to be breached. In January, 1949, when Lyndon Johnson arrived in it, it was still standing. — Robert A. Caro

We're more than friends and neighbors and allies; we are kin, who together have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world today. — Ronald Reagan

I welcome the signing by the presidential candidates Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani of an agreement on the formation of a government of national unity in Afghanistan, — Anders Fogh Rasmussen

The budget should be balanced not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies. — Herbert Hoover

On Election Day, Ralph Nader will appear on the presidential ballot in only 45 states. Yeah, Nader said, this is really disappointing, I wanted to embarrass myself in all 50 states. That was the plan. — Conan O'Brien

Have you seen these Republican presidential candidates? I bet Obama is sorry now that he spent all that money on the new birth certificate. — David Letterman

You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone. — George W. Bush