 |
 | ""Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers
unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young
men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall
from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and
particularly from a Revolutionary patriot."" | |
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James Madison
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| ""The President has kept all of the promises he intended to
keep."" | |
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George Stephanopolous
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| "A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus." | |
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Herbert Clark Hoover
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| "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor
will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of
this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But
let us begin." | |
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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| "America has furnished to the world the character of Washington. And
if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have
entitled them to the respect of mankind." | |
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Daniel Webster
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| "Any American who is prepared to run for president should
automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so." | |
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Gore Vidal
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| "Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion
... in private self-defense." | |
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John Quincy Adams
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| "Be sincere; be brief; be seated." | |
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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| "Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone
who doesn"t grow up can be vice president." | |
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Johnny Carson
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| "I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national
emergency, even if I?m in a cabinet meeting." | |
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Ronald Wilson Reagan
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| "I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective
over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in
sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment
of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through
the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to
those of the bed." | |
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Thomas Jefferson
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| "In America, anybody can be president. That"s one of the risks you
take." | |
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Adlai Stevenson
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| "In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents,
worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of
office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their
character." | |
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|
|
| "In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of
increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time that a
sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for
reelection." | |
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Hugo Rossi
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| "It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth,
and if we can teach our children to honor nature"s gifts, the joys and
beauties of the outdoors will be here forever." | |
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Jimmy Carter
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| "Letter to Horace Greeley. August 22, 1862 My paramount object in
this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I
would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do
because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I
forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall
do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I
shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the
cause." | |
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Abraham Lincoln
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| "My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that
ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." | |
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John Adams
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| "No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it
is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-
disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report ...." | |
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Woodrow Wilson
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| "On leaving the White House: If I"d known how much packing I"d have
to do, I"d have run again." | |
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Harry S. Truman
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|
| "One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for
suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once "The
Unnecessary War"." | |
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Sir Winston Churchill
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| "PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom ?
and of whom only ? it is positively known that immense numbers of their
countrymen did not want any of them for President." | |
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Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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| "President, N.S.W. Division of the United Nations Association: The
best way to create a radical is to hit a conservative person over the head
with a police truncheon." | |
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Dr. Keith Suter
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| "Sir, I would rather be right than be President." | |
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Henry Clay
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|
| "Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day
follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president"s
spouse. I wish him well!" | |
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Barbara Pierce Bush
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| "Study hard, and you might grow up to be President. But let"s face
it: Even then, you"ll never make as much money as your dog." | |
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George Herbert Walker Bush
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|
| "That this gentleman [President John Adams] ought not to be the
object of the federal wish, is, with me, reduced to demonstration. His
administration has already very materially disgraced and sunk the
government. There are defects in his character which must inevitably
continue to do this more and more. And if he is supported by the federal
party, his party must in the issue fall with him." | |
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Alexander Hamilton
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| "The office of the President is such a bastardized thing, half
royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or
spit." | |
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Jimmy Breslin
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| "The President has kept all of the promises he intended to
keep." | |
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Clinton aide George Stephanopolous
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|
| "The Vice Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate.
Everybody insists he won"t take it, but somebody always does." | |
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Bill Vaughan
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|
| "Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous
while they actually lived.... "The Reign of Terror that raged in America
during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of
that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the
Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast,
though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established
against them."" | |
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Thomas Paine
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| "Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the manner in which
the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not
subject to questioning by another branch of government." | |
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Richard Milhouse Nixon
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|
| "Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal
dates." | |
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General Dwight David Eisenhower
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| "We can"t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of
ordinary Americans..." | |
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William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton
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| "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." | |
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Theodore Roosevelt
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|
| "What a waste it is to lose one"s mind. Or not to have a mind is
being very wasteful. How true that is. Vice President Dan Quayle winning
friends while speaking to the United Negro College Fund, 5/9/89 This gem
has been added toBartlett"s "Familiar Quotations."" | |
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Dan Quayle
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| "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I
beginning to believe it." | |
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Clarence Seward Darrow
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|
| "When it was reported to General Washington that the army was
frequently indulging in swearing, he immediately sent out the following
order: The general is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked
practice of profane cursing and swearing ? a vice little known heretofore
in the American army ? is growing into fashion. Let the men and officers
reflect "that we can not hope for the blessing of heaven on our army if we
insult it by our impiety and folly."" | |
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George Washington
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| "You are uneasy; you never sailed with me before, I see." | |
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Andrew Jackson
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| "You can"t know too much, but you can say too much." | |
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John Calvin Coolidge
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