Quotes & Sayings About Vice President

You shut the door, you tell the boss exactly what you think. But when the door opens, the job of the vice president is to stand right next to the president and implement the policy that he's decided. And I'm prepared to do that. — Mike Pence

Officer Patrick Killion had called him to say he was following a lead on the assassin who'd killed the Vice President. — Toni Anderson

I read more than I had in years-novels, short stories, three long nonfiction books about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President). — Stephen King

I don't remember a single day during the time I was minister of gender, foreign minister, vice-president and president when I saw anything on the part of the men that indicated they were undermining me. — Joyce Banda

Hollis thought he looked like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who'd be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot. — William Gibson

I started at Pillsbury as a manager in one of their analysis functions, then worked my way up the corporate ladder to become vice president. Moving to Burger King was an important moment in my career. — Herman Cain

Elisabeth Hasselbeck could run for vice president. — Joy Behar

To all those who doubt the power of exercise -- and I was one of you -- take it from me: physical fitness has translated into an intellectual fitness I could not have imagined... I've learned that "I don't need to go for a run today" comes out of the same part of my brain as "I don't need to confront my vice president today about the low performance of his department." One suffer-session at a time, I have trained that part of my brain to endure short-term pain in exchange for long-term benefits. — Edward Stevens

Vice President Joe Biden said today that 'Syria must be held accountable.' Unfortunately, the Obama administration has never employed an accountant, so they have no idea how to do that. — Jay Leno

If what I've been told is true - and I believe it is, General David Petraeus, a commander with soldiers deployed in two theaters of war, has had multiple meetings with Dick Cheney, the former vice-president of the United States, to discuss Petraeus's candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency. — Eric Massa

I realize that some of you may be skeptical about the idea of reincarnation, but there's a lot of evidence that it's real. Exhibit A is Vice President Al Gore, who obviously, at some point in his previous existence, was a slab of Formica. — Dave Barry

I think that the vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality. — George W. Bush

If the clicker became useless in grown men's hands, no games to watch, no highlights shown, ESPN left with only test patterns and re-runs of Rudy, wouldn't the indignation level be a whole lot higher? If sports, all sports, all levels, were shut down, wouldn't the big clock be ticking a lot louder? Wouldn't John Boehner be calling the President and vice versa? Wouldn't Ted Cruz have to shut up in a hurry? — Leigh Montville

It's easy being vice president - you don't have to do anything. — Joe Biden

Humphrey was to say, and now he was planning to continue doing so, to use the chairmanship, in Humphrey's words, "to hang on to [the power] he had wielded as Majority Leader" as a "de facto Majority Leader"; Johnson "had the illusions that he could be in a sense, as Vice President, the Majority Leader." His proposal violated what was to these senators one of the Senate's most sacred precepts - its independence of the executive branch; he was proposing that a member of that branch preside over their meetings. — Robert A. Caro

Every presidential nominee says his vice president will be given a serious, important role in his new administration. But it almost never materializes. A strong, totally self-centered politician like Tom Dewey sharing his hard-won power with a vice president? Don't count on it.' - David Brinkley — David Pietrusza

Common wisdom dictates that the vice president should provide balance to the ticket by representing a different part of the country, another set of experiences, or a basketful of electoral votes. — Madeleine M. Kunin

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents. — Fred Allen

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself. — Scott McClellan

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

The facts are the vice president's company that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it's under investigation for bribing foreign officials. — John Edwards

Whenever Congress was in session, we were in Washington. So four months out of the year we were in Tennessee and the rest of the time in Arlington, which is where my mom grew up. Then, of course, in 1992 we moved into the vice president's house in D.C. I was 15 then. — Kristin Gore

In the words of then - vice president Richard Nixon, the increasing crime rate "can be traced directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to disobey them."37 — Michelle Alexander

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

When the Vietnamese came to the United States they often faced prejudice from everyone - White, Black, and Hispanics. But they didn't beg for handouts and often took the lowest jobs offered. Even well-educated individuals didn't mind sweeping floors if it was a paying job. Today many of these same Vietnamese are property owners and entrepreneurs. That's the message I try to get across to the young people. The same opportunities are there, but we can't start out as vice president of the company. Even if we landed such a position, it wouldn't do us any good anyway because we wouldn't know how to do our work. It's better to start where we can fit in and then work our way up. — Ben Carson

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

I'm the only American alive or dead who presided unhappily over the removal of a vice president and a president. — Alexander Haig

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

Al Gore, the former vice-president of the United States, lives in a mansion that uses more electricity than the average family's bungalow! David Suzuki rides on a bus that uses more fuel than a Smart car to get across Canada! Oh my God! And this is just the tip of the vanishing iceberg! — Linwood Barclay

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

I am not interested in being vice president of the United States. I've let the candidate know. If the candidate asks me to be vice president, the answer is I got to say yes. But he's not going to ask me. — Brian Williams

We've had experiences where the president's been shot, but never had a situation where the vice president shot somebody. — Dick Cheney

My team members are Hector Soto, who is a boxing promoter and Vice-president of Miguel Cotto Promotions. He runs all my business. He was the person that my father left in charge of it all. Bryan Perez is my right-hand man. — Miguel Cotto

Ladies, [motherhood] is a full-time job. Do not kid yourself that you can be a dental receptionist and a mother; that you can be a typist and a mom; that you can be a Vice President and a mom. One of the two things will win. Now look at your Bible and ask what you have to do. — Alistair Begg

Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President-and nothing was ever heard from either of them again. — Thomas R. Marshall

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

I worked in the White House on 9/11, where the vice president was given the authority to, if he deemed necessary, shoot down an American passenger jet. — Nicolle Wallace

I was student council president in high school, and even in law school, I was vice-president of the student bar association. — Demetri Martin

Let's just be clear here. The vice president of the United States accidentally shoots a man, and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper and not the White House press corps at large, or notify the public in a national way. — David Gregory

Mr. Vice President, the most fiscally conservative thing this government has ever done, is to invest massively in the green part of the recovery. Because those green dollars are the hardest working dollars in the history of American politics. That same dollar that is being used to cut energy bills, is also cutting global warming gas emissions, is also cutting unemployment, is also cutting poverty, through retrofits it's also raising the value of homes, is also by cleaning the air, cutting asthma rates. — Van Jones

The vice-president's tongue is several time zones ahead of his brain. — Christopher Buckley

My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be president of the United States, I could be, I could be Vice President! — Joe Biden

I remember when you could always rely on those little street kids to pop a few people for the latest Nikes," Vice-President John said. "Now people get mugged for Reeboks, for Adidas - for generics, for Christ's sake. — Max Barry

Donors want to meet famous people, and getting a high profile draw for a fundraiser is one way to boost both the crowd and the cash. It's why the president and the vice president are always in demand. These folks are in demand because people around the country want to meet them. — Carl Forti

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

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

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. — Joe Biden

President Obama was in Disney World today where he unveiled his new plan to create jobs. He was joined by Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse but not Goofy. He had to stay behind to tend to his vice presidential duties. — Jay Leno

Vice President Biden's surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden's pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover. — Robert Dallek

People don't vote for vice president, they vote for president. — Susan Estrich

I'd rather not be known as the Vice President's lesbian daughter. — Mary Cheney

I had known Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, for nearly twenty years. He was a career Air Force officer who had risen through the ranks to become Vice President under Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian ruler who fought the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973 and later signed the Camp David Accords. Mubarak was injured in the extremist attack that assassinated Sadat in 1981, but he survived, became President, and cracked down hard on Islamists and other dissidents. He ruled Egypt like a pharaoh with nearly absolute power for the next three decades. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

I won vice president of my student body in high school. That doesn't mean anything. — Al Sharpton

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once." It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam. — David Halberstam

Except for the title 'father,' there is no title, including 'vice president,' that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator. — Joe Biden

If the president and the Vice President dies who becomes President" "Thats easy Arnold Swartzanager — Dan Gutman

The office of the Vice-President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining. — Chester A. Arthur

First Lady Michelle Obama has posted an exercise video of her beating up a punching bag. But don't worry, Vice President Biden is going to be OK. — Conan O'Brien

Despite a legacy consisting of enough violence and death for twenty men, Jackson admitted to having two regrets on his deathbed: "I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't murder John C. Calhoun." In a life rich with murdering people for little-to-no reason, Jackson's only regret was that he didn't kill quite enough people. People like Calhoun, who, it should be noted, was Jackson's vice president. No one is safe from Jackson's wrath. — Daniel O'Brien

Executive Vice President? That's a nice way of saying he's someone's corporate bitch. — Jennifer Estep

So intense was the partisanship of the day, so much did the Federalists hate and fear Jefferson, that they were ready to turn the country over to Aaron Burr. Had they succeeded and made Burr the president, there would almost certainly be no republic today. Fortunately for all, Hamilton was smart enough and honest enough to realize that Jefferson was the lesser evil. He used his influence to break the deadlock. On the thirty-sixth ballot, February 17, 1801, Jefferson was chosen president and Burr was elected vice-president. It was an age marked by — Stephen E. Ambrose

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone. — Rod Serling

The White House admitted that Vice President Biden's endorsement of gay marriage forced him to come out in favor of it. So in a related story millions of Americans are trying to get Biden hooked on pot. — Conan O'Brien

I don't know how many people run for vice president and president and lose both. — Bob Dole

partner, and before that, worked with Rachel as iCrossing's vice president of corporate strategy. Noah has consulted for organizations as diverse as the Inter-American Development Bank, Oxford Analytica, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), for which he was appointed to chair the first ministerial meeting on information and communication technology (ICT) for development — Rachel Pasqua

From almost the first day they got into office, they (President Bush and Vice President Cheney) were trying to figure out how to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I'm not a psychiatrist - I don't know all of the reasons behind their concern, some might say their obsession. — Hillary Clinton

I may not be funny. I may not be a singer. I may not be a damn seamstress. I may have diabetes. I may have really bad vision. I may have one leg. I may not know how to read. I may not know who the vice president is. I may technically be an alien of the state. I may have a Zune. I may not know Excel. I may be two 9 year olds in a trench coat. I may not have full control of my bowels. I may drive a '94 Honda Civic. I may not "get" cameras. I may dye my hair with Hydrogen Peroxide. I may be afraid of trees. I may be on fire right now. But I'm a fierce queen. — Justin Johnson

There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified. In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't qualified to be governor of California. Ronald Reagan wasn't qualified to be governor, let alone president. I was a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president. My duties consisted of attending meetings and voting. The only thing I remember is that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him what to say. That's no way to run a union, let along a state or a country. — James Garner

Scott Bedbury, Starbucks' vice president of marketing, openly recognized that "consumers don't truly believe there's a huge difference between products," which is why brands must "establish emotional ties" with their customers — Naomi Klein

Under Cheney's direction, the United States moved to restore the powers of secret intelligence that had flourished for fifty-five years under J. Edgar Hoover. In public speeches, the president, the vice president, and the attorney general renewed the spirit of the Red raids. In top secret orders, they revived the techniques of surveillance that the FBI had used in the war on communism. The — Tim Weiner

I'm not interested in Vice President. I'm hanging around Arizona. I'm running again for Sheriff. — Joe Arpaio

Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to. — William Blum

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life. — George H. W. Bush

The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow - and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked - people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American. — Ken Follett

How rude would I be, walking around and saying: 'Hello. I'm Eleanor Mondale. My father was vice president of the United States. Treat me differently.' — Eleanor Mondale

I actually prepared Vice President Biden for his debate in the last election. I played Sarah Palin. It's a little tough debating a woman. — Jennifer Granholm

Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is-I'm not sure 80 percent of the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the president. — George W. Bush

If you are the wife of a governor or the wife of a vice president, I think you can be prepared for it. — Barbara Bush

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

The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin. What if somebody who was ill-equipped for the office were to ascend to the presidency or vice presidency? What would they do? How long would it take for people to figure it out? — Nicolle Wallace

Vice president: A spare tire on the automobile of government. — John Nance Garner

Secretary of state is far superior to vice president, because it's involved in continuously solving problems and making policy and not being on standby. — Gloria Steinem

Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other. — Edwin Newman

I ask the vice president to stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued ties with Halliburton to the American people. — Frank Lautenberg

For seven years after college, I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, and from there I got a job at Merrill Lynch as an account executive, from where I went to vice president of investments for Prudential-Bache Securities. I started my own firm in 1987. — Suze Orman

We as a species must make a decision. How absurd that sounds. It sounds absurd because we've never made a decision as a species, and it seems implausible to think that we could. But . . . continuing on our present course would threaten the entirety of human civilization. . . We could well have only a decade within which to make major changes lest we lose the opportunity to retrieve a climate balance that is favorable for human life and human civilization. Al Gore, U.S. Vice President, 1993-2001 — George A. Seielstad

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

Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president, died from multiple myeloma. Frank Reynolds, the ABC anchorman, who I had talked to toward the end of his life, not knowing what he had, died from it. Later I found out that Frank McGee, who was the Today Show host, died from it. — Tom Brokaw

Remember, no one decides who they're going to vote for based on the vice president. I mean that literally. — Joe Biden

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it's Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is. — Dan Quayle

Your commander would never lie to you. That's the vice president's job. — Henry Rollins

The vice president had a bargaining asset, however, that no ordinary person has: He was next in line to the presidency. I saw no chance that he would resign first, then take his chances on trial, conviction, and jail. — Elliot Richardson

There was a burst of applause when George Washington entered and walked to the dais. More applause followed on the appearance of Thomas Jefferson, who had been inaugurated Vice President upstairs in the Senate earlier that morning, and "like marks of approbation" greeted John Adams, who on his entrance in the wake of the two tall Virginians seemed shorter and more bulky even than usual. — David McCullough

As a dad, you are the Vice President of the executive branch of parenting. It doesn't matter what your personality is like, you will always be Al Gore to your wife's Bill Clinton. She feels the pain and you are the annoying nerd telling them to turn off the lights. — Jim Gaffigan

The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady. — Dick Morris

Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company's fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar. — James Surowiecki

Impeach the President and the Vice President, they are traitors to America, and so are all of their supporters. Impeach! Anyone in congress who refuses to save our union from these traitors by doing nothing needs to be recalled. — Roseanne Barr

My preference would be to remain in the Senate, ... But you can't say I would refuse to serve in one of those (Cabinet) capacities. It's not the same as vice president. — John McCain

Mission accomplished? The mission in Iraq, as laid out by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has failed. — Robert Byrd

Mike Morrison, vice president and dean of the University of Toyota, likes to ask employees: "What's on the other side of your card?" In other words, the front of your business card may read "Managing Director," but you may better identify with "big picture thinker" or "educator" or "calm under fire." This kind of information - or even a few simple details like where a person lives, what his or her favorite hobby is - cuts through the red tape to get somewhere more meaningful, and it can more immediately and effectively forge a connection between two people. — Shawn Achor