Quotes About Responsibility

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can't just pop off or lash out irrationally.

I've said all along we need a chief executive, not a chief politician, in the White House.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher's mound or you can be in the catcher's position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

It is true that when you're in the White House alone, it is a lonely place. Big and lonely.

I've said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

When you're not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it's important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

He told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.

Pick somebody who knows what it's like to live on an average income and to deal with the problems that most Americans face. Pick somebody who's traveled this country and who will remember who put him in the White House - not to be a king but to be a public servant.

If you're a public figure, and if you're working in the White House, you should expect everything you're saying in any context to be leaked.

Although the attorney general is a part of the president's team, you're really separate and apart. You have a special responsibility as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. There has to be a distance that you keep - between this department and the White House.

You don't need to know who's playing on the White House tennis court to be a good president.

But presidents matter. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned being in the White House.

Every decision that they take has enormous consequences, and ripple out from the White House.

The White House alone cannot hold its opponents accountable.

Mr. Truman studiously avoided giving power to his White House staff that has been characteristic of recent administrations. Staff people in the White House, with no responsibility but incredible authority is one of the reasons we're now in so much trouble.

It is hard for people outside the White House to understand the constant daily problems and issues that come up that require the president's attention, but he can not let himself get too personally involved.

Even Colin Powell who was everywhere before he became secretary of state, just stopped going out. I think part of it was he didn't want to be viewed suspiciously by the other people in the White House who rarely go anywhere.

What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago - isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

The White House is a huge organization, first and foremost.

Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man.

What people see the first family do has an effect. And from a slightly different aspect, I think that family living in the White House is going to have a profound effect on many Americans.

Second terms in the White House open the way for second thoughts.

I really don't sit here and dream what life in the White House will be like. I just can't go beyond the point when the people go to the ballot box with all that power.