Quotes About Presidents

What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress—lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!

What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress—lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!

Doctrines provide an architecture for both Republican and Democrat presidents to carry out policies.

The funeral. The one with presidents and ministers and secretaries of this or that, representing these or those, all decked out and solemn in black and respect. It was the biggest funeral ever, somebody had said. Everyone who was anyone, everywhere that was anywhere, had somebody, a Somebody, in attendance. Nobody wanted to miss the funeral.

this country since 1865 has an unenviable record for political violence. Four presidents, plus the attempts on Truman and both Roosevelts—as you know, Teddy was actually wounded, in his unsuccessful campaign in 1912—not to mention Huey Long. There isn't a country west of the Balkans with any kind of the same record. The Prime Ministers of England go everywhere with a single bodyguard.

Throughout American history our presidents have invoked our nation's founding fathers. This is particularly true of recent presidents.

Securing freedom has been a singular commitment of American presidents and patriots in and out of government for generations. But its perpetual continuation is not guaranteed.

Republican presidents talk about freedom. Democratic presidents talk about equality.

As we go from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Mitt Romney, I now understand why the Republicans don't believe in evolution.

people] can see only the human actors upon the stage of history. Wicked rulers, ruthless dictators, tyrants, oppressors, kings, governments, and presidents are, to them, the real and only characters in the great drama of life as it affects the political realm. They have no idea at all of the unseen realm of evil personalities, energizing and motivating their human agents…

Every President that went to China, I would meet them and have dinner and talk about the past and the future. That was in the '70s.

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, I am not a crook. Jimmy Carter says, I have lusted after women in my heart. President Reagan says, I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.

Presidents don't do it to their wives. They do it to their country.

yet discover the charm and wisdom of Donald Trump. Where past presidents might have spent portions of their day talking about the needs, desires, and points of leverage among various members of Congress, the president and Hicks spent a great deal of time talking about a fixed cast of media personalities, trying to second-guess the real agendas and weak spots among cable anchors and producers and Times and Post reporters.

he could yet make a case for a straight line from Nixon to Trump.

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

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

Nowadays, men are acting like women and women like men. Thus, the rise in female presidents in the world.

If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition, and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives—personal and patriotic—to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time they all compete for history's blessing.

As I hung up and walked slowly back to our table," Nixon recalled, "it dawned on me that I had just participated in a probably unprecedented series of conversations. In the space of less than ten minutes, I had talked to a former President of the United States, the present president and the President-elect!" And they, in turn, had all talked not just to the current vice president, but a future president.

The four company presidents—as well as the CEOs of R. J. Reynolds and Brown and Williamson—had agreed to cooperate on a public relations program to defend their product.25 They would work together to convince the public that there was "no sound scientific basis for the charges," and that the recent reports were simply "sensational accusations" made by publicity-seeking scientists hoping to attract more funds for their research.

Yellow and brown men forgot in listening to the rhetoric of American presidents that the United States was a status quo power with a great capacity to rationalize arrangements that served its status quo interests.

I mean he's like … like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we're pushed into the future. He's nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here—that we'll get through these bad times and back to normal.