Quotes & Sayings About The New President

Getting elected Governor of New Mexico, I really did enjoy that job. I thought I made a really big difference, and I think the same running for president of the United States - that I could make a really big, positive difference. — Gary Johnson

There will never be a bill without a pathway to citizenship signed by the president ... And in turn there will never be a pathway to citizenship without a new immigration system replacing the current one. — Lindsey Graham

New Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is fluent in Chinese. In a short period of time the Republicans have come quite a long way. The last Republican president wasn't even fluent in English. — David Letterman

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

The new rule of thumb is that 80% of a president's time must be spent in raising funds for their schools. — James E. Rogers

The President of the Galaxy had arrived. He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hand in greeting. "Hi," he said. A government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a copy of his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven of the original version were at the moment floating soggily on the Damogran Sea some five miles out from the bay. Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. — Douglas Adams

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

A new report just came out that says President Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in more speeches than President Bush did. Can you believe that? Still, neither has used the phrase 'Oh God, oh God,' more than President Clinton. — Conan O'Brien

Chris Christie won by such a wide margin that pundits say this will give him the impetus he needs to run for president. And he's got a new slogan: 'Put the oval in the Oval Office.' — Jay Leno

The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, 'When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of children.' — Albert Shanker

President Obama will be going to Disney World where he'll unveil his new plan to create jobs. And what better place for the president to talk about his jobs plan than Fantasyland? — Jay Leno

Well, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is back - not for gays in the military. It's President Obama's new policy for questions about Libya. Don't ask, don't tell. — Jay Leno

Our nation must manage significant national security challenges over the next several years. We are already facing a potential conflict with Iraq, new challenges on the Korean peninsula, and key decisions in the president's plans to transform the military. — Duncan Hunter

Epigraphs from Ballroom Dancing: An Erotic Romance of Dominance and Submission

"He's like my father in a way - loves the chase and is bored with the conquest - and once married, needs proof he's still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you."
- Jacqueline Bouvier, July, 1952, making an observation about her future husband in a letter to her priest "Father L," the Reverend Joseph Leonard of Dublin, Ireland.

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, Mr. President..."
- Norma Jeane Mortenson, May 19, 1962, Madison Square Garden, New York City. — Anna Andreesen

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

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, arguably President Obama's best Cabinet appointment, has been leading a quiet revolution in clean-energy technology. Innovation is transforming this industry, costs are plummeting and entrepreneurs are devising radical new systems that create American jobs - in addition to protecting the planet. — David Ignatius

Say, this new home building idea of President Hoover's sounds good. They are working out a lot of beneficial things. The only thing is it took 'em so long to think of any of 'em. We ought to have plans in case of depression, just like we do in case of fire, 'Walk, don't run, to the nearest exit.' — Will Rogers

Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing "incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality" to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that "no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives." Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but "republican fanaticism" for the current "avalanche of destruction. — Harold Holzer

I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down ... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll ... and then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'" "Just what my agenda is." - Bill Hicks — James H. Fetzer

We've been very clear all along on where we draw the line," Jim Ward, Lucasfilm's vice president of marketing, told The New York Times. "We love our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact somebody is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that's not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is. — Anne Elizabeth Moore

Today was opening day for the new Congress in Washington. And Vice President Joe Biden swore in the new batch of White House fence jumpers. — David Letterman

And people talk about the stimulus package and the jobs that it was supposed to create, it certainly didn't have the intended effects that everybody was hoping for or that the president and administration certainly was hoping for. So I think it's time to lay some new solutions on the table, some new ideas. — Kristi Noem

We campaigned across the South ... without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got north to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan, and then Mrs. Ferraro ... Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history. — Jesse Jackson

To paraphrase president Kennedy's inaugural, the torch has been passed to a new generation of cartoonists and they are doing really interesting stuff, taking the old cliches and breathing new life into them and inventing new ones. This doesn't mean the previous generation of which I'm a charter member isn't doing good stuff but this new material is invigorating everyone. — Robert Mankoff

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 tell you, the economy is in bad shape. In fact, the economy is so bad, President Barack Obama's new slogan is 'Spare Change You Can Believe In.' — Jay Leno

Democrats are committed to mapping a new direction in Iraq, and we will work with the President and the new Defense Secretary to ensure that the will of the American people guides our future actions. — Jim Clyburn

The Catholic community, with many others, has long worked for this new commitment on global health and debt relief (President George W. Bushs proposed $15 billion Global AIDS initiative). I hope that Congress will now appropriate the money needed to make this legislation a reality, and that the U.S. government will press for strengthening the debt relief program along the lines proposed by this legislation. — John Ricard

A regard for the public tranquillity, which would so frequently have been interrupted by annual or by occasional elections, induced the primitive Christians to constitute an honourable and perpetual magistracy, and to choose one of the wisest and most holy among their presbyters to execute, during his life, the duties of their ecclesiastical governor. It was under these circumstances that the lofty title of Bishop began to raise itself above the humble appellation of presbyter; and while the latter remained the most natural distinction for the members of every Christian senate, the former was appropriated to the dignity of its new president. — Edward Gibbon

To go into Ukraine and to take over, to invade Crimea, is a huge step. And [Russian President Vladimir Putin] would only have done it with a president who has shown from the very beginning that [President Obama] is living in a fantasy world ... They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory. — Charles Krauthammer

Turkey wants a policy of engagement exactly like President Obama's new approach. Policy of engagement, less confrontation, less tense attitude, especially in the region. — Ahmet Davutoglu

bluntly, a transfer of power could hardly have occurred at a better time: there were no important decisions to be made; there was nothing of consequence for the new President to consider for the next couple of days. — Jim Bishop

Americans, though apparently impressed by ghastly sentimentality and outrageous hypocrisy, are by nature much more politically cynical than Canadians. In their longer history they have had much more to be cynical about. They demand a vulgar show, enjoy it, guffaw, and forget it the next morning. When a new U.S. President takes office all bets are off and his campaign platform is dismantled and stored away. — Gordon Donaldson

A New Campus: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ann Bowers. Steve Jobs, appearance before the Cupertino City Council, June 7, 2011. CHAPTER 41: ROUND THREE Family Ties: Interviews with Laurene Powell, Erin Jobs, Steve Jobs, Kathryn Smith, Jennifer Egan. Email from Steve Jobs, June 8, 2010, 4:55 p.m.; Tina Redse to Steve Jobs, July 20, 2010, and Feb. 6, 2011. President Obama: Interviews with David Axelrod, Steve Jobs, John Doerr, Laurene Powell, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Schmidt, Austan Goolsbee. Third Medical Leave, 2011: Interviews with Kathryn Smith, Steve Jobs, Larry Brilliant. Visitors: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mike Slade. CHAPTER 42: LEGACY Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It (Yale, 2008), 2; Cory Doctorow, Why I Won't Buy an iPad, — Walter Isaacson

Everybody who has dealt with China over an extended period of time has come to more or less the same conclusions. There are nuances of differences, but not fundamental differences. I think that President Bush was heading in this direction, and I have no doubt that he will again wind up in this position. But right now he has to be preoccupied with the atrocity committed in New York and Washington. — Henry A. Kissinger

If you want to - if you want to engage in conspiracy theories that the White House and the vice president intended no one to ever know - like "The New York Times" - we would have been kept in the dark forever. I just think that's completely irrational. — Kate O'Beirne

But no opposition grumbling could spoil the moment for the new president-elect. He donned his overcoat, thanked the telegraph operators for their hard work and hospitality, and stuffed the final dispatch from New York into his pocket as a souvenir. It was about time, he announced to one and all, that he "went home and told the news to a tired woman who was sitting up for him. — Harold Holzer

President Obama is the best-known politician to be exploring the possibilities of new technologies to converse with the people. Others must follow his lead and innovate. It is inevitable. — Eduardo Paes

The Apotheosis of Washington - a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda - was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as "The Michelangelo of the Capitol," Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room's most lofty canvas - the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God's largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery - from the trompe l'oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President's Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi's masterwork. Robert — Dan Brown

Washington's character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice. — Stephen Ambrose

In the incongruous role of the insurgent party-builder, he made crystal clear the whole host of inferences we have drawn from the experiences of Monroe and Polk: that innovation, however orthodox, is inherently destabilizing; that the purely constructive leadership project is an illusion; that the affiliated leader cannot assume independent ground without ultimately embracing the role of the heretic; that the only way ever to be president in your own right is to become yourself a great repudiator and set yourself directly against the bulwark of received power; that political disruption parallels presidential significance. Roosevelt's insight was not simply that new achievements do not rest securely on old foundations, but that to save the handiwork of his presidency he would have to reconstruct its political base. — Stephen Skowronek

I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.
Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president. — James Patterson

Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims by saying, 'To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,' his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic. — Charles Krauthammer

Chick-fil-A is not welcome in New York City as long as the company's president continues to uphold and promote his discriminatory views. — Christine Quinn

Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president. — Mitt Romney

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can — Barack Obama

A local phrase book, entitled Speak in Korean, has the following handy expressions. In the section 'On the Way to the Hotel': 'Let's Mutilate US Imperialism!' In the section 'Word Order': 'Yankees are wolves in human shape - Yankees / in human shape / wolves / are.' In the section 'Farewell Talk': 'The US Imperialists are the sworn enemy of the Korean people.' Not that the book is all like this - the section 'At the Hospital' has the term solsaga ('I have loose bowels'), and the section 'Our Foreign Friends Say' contains the Korean for 'President Kim Il Sung is the sun of mankind.'
I wanted a spare copy of this phrase book to give to a friend, but found it was hard to come by. Perhaps this was a sign of a new rapprochement with the United States, or perhaps it was because, on page 46, in the section on the seasons, appear the words: haemada pungnyoni dumnida ('We have a bumper harvest every year'). — Christopher Hitchens

I, on the other hand, spent most of the morning coming up with good names for cats that I don't currently have. My current favorite is "The President." It's an awesome name because you'd constantly find yourself saying things like, "The President will not stop sitting on my keyboard." Or "The President just threw up on the new rug." Or "I like sleeping with the President but why do I always wake up with his butt on my face?" I — Jenny Lawson

I will set big goals for this country as president - some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist.""I will recruit new teachers and make new investments in rural schools, we'll connect all of America to 21st century technology and telecommunications. — Barack Obama

President Bush says in the last month he has created 300,000 new jobs. Yeah, they're called Kerry campaign workers. — Craig Kilborn

In this context, I believe it is an imperative for the new President to select and install his team as quickly as possible, and this does not imply that he must or should appoint members of the 'other' party to his Cabinet, which could contribute to inaction and inefficiency. — Richard V. Allen

And I know I've lost.
Everything is lost.
Everything is over.
"As the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours," the Mayor says, holding out his hands as if to show me the world for the first time," let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city."
"Todd?" Viola whispers, her eyes closed.
I hold her tightly to me.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to her. "I'm so sorry."
We've run right into a trap.
We've run right off the end of the world.
"Welcome," says the Mayor," to the New Prentisstown. — Patrick Ness

That night, as he bounded up the steps and out of the church basement, nobody in the room could have imagined that they had just seen the man who, a decade from now, would become the first black president of the United States. NEW — Isabel Wilkerson

But since President Obama allowed Colorado and Washington to legalize recreational use and sales of marijuana following initiatives in 2012, the United Stets itself is probably now violating international law. (Because we have traditional been the ones who interpret and enforce these laws, it's hard to know exactly; of course, we say we are not.) And with even federal drug control officials slowly embracing harm reduction officially, we have remained silent on New Zealand's law. — Maia Szalavitz

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

Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment. — Jon Meacham

I have a new show now called 'The Bridge,' where I play a guy who's a real-life guy. My character's based on the life of a guy named Craig Bromell who was a cop for 12 years and then became head of the police association, so basically the president of the union for 85,000 cops. — Aaron Douglas

Winfree came from a family in which no one had gone to college. He got started, he would say, by not having proper education. His father, rising from the bottom of the life insurance business to the level of vice president, moved family almost yearly up and down the East Coast, and Winfree attended than a dozen schools before finishing high school. He developed a feeling that the interesting things in the world had to do with biology and mathematics and a companion feeling that no standard combination of the two subjects did justice to what was interesting. So he decided not to take a standard approach. He took a five-year course in engineering physics at Cornell University, learning applied mathematics and a full range of hands-on laboratory styles. Prepared to be hired into military-industrial complex, he got a doctorate in biology, striving to combine experiment with theory in new ways. — James Gleick

President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education, in roads and bridges, in science, and in the future so we can create new opportunities so the next kid can make it big and the kid afer that and the kid after that, that's what President Obama believes. — Elizabeth Warren

We need a President who is not afraid of complexity, who believes in an open and tolerant society, and who knows that the world can be made new again - and that President is Al Gore. — Caroline Kennedy

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

As a new president takes office and elevates global warming alarmism to official federal policy, much of America is experiencing record low temperatures. While the deep freeze amounts to little more than irony, Americans should nevertheless take what could well be a last opportunity to reconsider the cliff off which Barack Obama, Al Gore and the rest of the global warming industry want us to jump. — Steven Milloy

There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come. — Jon Meacham

I say, they [those at the top] don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs. — Gore Vidal

IT (The country) IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING - FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT'S HIM, THAT'S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE'S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED "DICK." HE'S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TV EVANGELIST - OUR FUTURE PRESIDENT. WHAT'S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY'RE SO SURE THEY'RE RIGHT! THAT'S PRETTY SCARY - THE FUTURE, I THINK, IS PRETTY SCARY. — John Irving

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

As John Kerry sails toward the Democratic nomination, new questions are emerging about President Bush's service in the National Guard, like where he was for six months in 1972 and why he refused to take a routine physical. President Bush has vowed to get to the bottom of this right after Election Day. — Craig Kilborn

How about a new game show called 'Battle Begala?' Contestants would pick any obscure bad thing that happened anywhere in the world, and Paul would have 10 seconds to explain why it is President Bush's fault, — Ann Coulter

Usually, those persons closest to the incoming President will be the main leaders of the Transition effort. They are most familiar with his policies and practices, and are able to interpret his wishes regarding the structure and staffing of the new Administration. — Richard V. Allen

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.
Joe Biden, speaking at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, Sept. 10, 2008 — Joe Biden

Former president George W. Bush released his new memoir. By the way, 'memoir' is just a fancy word for 'a bunch of stuff that happened to me. — Craig Ferguson

My approach to cutting spending as president, is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies, and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget. — Herman Cain

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or where will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for war seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed
for anyone, and certainly not for a baffled little creep like George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it off. — Hunter S. Thompson

At this moment the President is beginning to speak in New Orleans and the Vice-President is mounting the platform at NASA a few miles away. Both are making a plea for unity. The President, who is an integrationist Mormon married to a liberated Catholic, will appeal to Leftists to respect law and order. The Vice-President, a Southern Baptist Knothead married to a conservative Unitarian, is asking Knotheads for tolerance and understanding, etcetera. The poor U.S.A.! Even — Walker Percy

There are now reports that President Obama will name Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of defense. Apparently this is part of America's new defense strategy to bore our enemies to death. — Jay Leno

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 more engagement with New Zealand than people might think. Unlike the impression I have of the American president, who sits in the Oval Office and people come to them. — John Key

In a new poll 54 percent believed President Bush exaggerated the size of Iraq's missile threat. Hey, he's a guy. — Craig Kilborn

The melting pot failed to function in one crucial area. Religions and nationalities, however different, generally learned to live together, even to grow together, in America. But color was something else. Reds were murdered like wild animals. Yellows were characterized as a peril and incarcerated en masse during World War ii for no really good reason by our most liberal president. Browns have been abused as the new slave labor on farms. The blacks, who did not come here willingly, are now, more than a century after emancipation by Lincoln, still suffering a host of slave like inequalities. — Theodore Hesburgh

Hillary Clinton, our junior senator from New York, announced that she has no intentions of ever, ever running for office of the President of the United States. Her husband, Bill Clinton, is bitterly disappointed. He is crushed. There go his dreams of becoming a two-impeachment family. — David Letterman

President Bush will come here and there will be new 'friends' of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who 'liberated' them. — Robert Fisk

I told her that my happy yellow teapot has a kinky backstory involving a nineteenth-century vegetarian sex cult in upstate New York whose members lived for three decades as self-proclaimed "Bible communists" before incorporating into the biggest supplier of dinnerware to the American food-service industry, not to mention harboring their most infamous resident, an irritating young maniac who, years after he moved away, was hanged for assassinating President Garfield. — Sarah Vowell

I came to this country when I was 12 years old because my parents wanted to give me new opportunities to succeed. President Obama wants everyone to have the chances I had. — Cristina Saralegui

Truman had been sitting in a chair in the bedroom with several new books stacked on a table beside him. Did the President like to read himself to sleep at night, McCormick asked. "No, young man," said Truman, "I like to read myself awake." Thomas — David McCullough

A new poll found that 43 percent of Americans think President Obama is doing a good job at handling the BP oil spill. Of course, the same poll found that 43 percent of Americans hate pelicans. — Jimmy Fallon

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

President Reagan fueled the spirit of America. His smile, his optimism, his total belief in the ultimate triumph of democracy and freedom, and his willingness to act on that belief, helped end the Cold War and usher in a new and brighter phase of history. — Colin Powell

Besides, he knew something that Chuck Percy, ABC News, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and even the President of the United States did not know: a new conservative-movement political machine was humming just beneath the Establishment's radar in North Carolina, ready to rewire what people thought they knew about how American politics worked. THE — Rick Perlstein

People are not going to reelect Barack Obama. But will the new president govern as a real conservative? We're going to have to apply the heat to make sure. — Steve Forbes

Roughly speaking, the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution and custom spell it out, for him as well as for us. His wife has no such luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her own. — Shana Alexander

Every new invention is like a baby. You think it may cure cancer or become the president, but in the end, you're happy it just stays out of jail. — Eric Betzig

In a new interview, the president discussed the upcoming election. He said that Hillary Clinton is going to do great as a presidential candidate. When asked how Biden would do, Obama said, 'Hillary's going to do great.' — Jimmy Fallon

If it is widely assumed that the new President cannot move forward simply because of a narrow victory, there can easily develop a sense of unease and uncertainty, adversely affecting every sector of American society, our economy and the perception of other nations. — Richard V. Allen

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you know what I mean ... '
She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently). — Christopher Hitchens

He (Abraham Lincoln) said he wanted to visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footprints of the Saviour. He was saying there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem. And with the words half spoken on his tongue, the bullet of the assassin entered the brain, and the soul of the great and good President was carried by the angels to the New Jerusalem above. — Mary Todd Lincoln

When President Mbeki said, if you get AIDS, you can have a shower and it goes away. It's like, oh, come on. Or it's caused by poverty. We faced those kind of issues. But now, with the new regime, they have really woken up, paid attention. And when South Africa speaks, then the whole of Africa will listen. And I have got great hopes for that. — Elton John

Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard. — Tony Kushner

In early 1961 a new president, John F. Kennedy, was told by military leaders and civilian officials that the Kingdom of Laos - of no conceivable strategic importance to the U.S. - required the presence of American troops and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Why? Because if Laos fell, Asia would go red from Thailand to Indonesia. — Jeff Greenfield

So, I'm lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say, 'Free at last,' and she says 'You're free all right, you're free to do the dishes.' So I say, 'You're talking to the former president, baby,' and she said, 'consider this your new domestic policy agenda.' — George W. Bush

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex. — Cornel West