Presidents Quotes

“I know I am going where Lucy is.”
― Rutherford B. Hayes

“We Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

“Water.”
― Ulysses S. Grant

“The nourishment is palatable.”
― Millard Fillmore

“I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.”
― James K. Polk

“She won't think anything about it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“[On Theodore Roosevelt] I always enjoy his society, he is so hearty, so straightforward, outspoken and, for the moment, so absolutely sincere.”
― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“The Southern strategy of the Nixon administration is based upon the same principle as the Compromise of 1876: namely, that Northern Republicans and Southern conservatives share common interests and together can rule this nation. I do not think it is possible to condemn too harshly what the President has done in the South in order to form this alliance. Indeed, I can think of no recent President who has more blatantly sacrificed the ideals of equality and racial justice for his own political ends. Nor is Nixon simply riding the wave of reaction. He is encouraging that reaction, for he knows that he became President because of divisions in the society, and that it is in his interest that these divisions grow wider.”
― Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
― George Washington

“I pray heaven,” Adams wrote, “to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“Swaim, can’t you stop the pain?”
― James A. Garfield

“I regret that I should leave this world without again beholding him.”
― James Monroe

“The spacious philanthropy which [President Woodrow Wilson] exhaled upon Europe stopped quite sharply at the coasts of his own country.”
― Winston Churchill

“Don’t build a watch; tell voters the time.”
― Rick Wilson, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump — And Democrats from Themselves

“Yes, We Can”
― Barack Obama

“You know, you don't have to be white to be president of anything. Even of the United States. I could be president! Black as I am! And if you white and poor, you don't have to be rich to get to be president either.”
― J. California Cooper, The Matter Is Life

“Poems have serious business to do
They need to bring down presidents who
Start wars they themselves wouldn't go to”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“For reasons I find hard to fathom, readers with government [Harvard?] experience follow my argument more easily that do some of those for whom it remains theoretical. (xv)”
― Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

“And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country's peril. In time of war, the government and the press have customarily joined in an effort based largely on self-discipline, to prevent unauthorized disclosures to the enemy. In time of "clear and present danger," the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the public's need for national security.”
― John F. Kennedy, The Greatest Speeches of President John F. Kennedy

“A cross with a bent tip that's the Facebook logo
New religion, clouds drip Grapefruit Yoko Ono

A clown wears the crown for years and we celebrate
Rule of law turned upside down, we tolerate

I no longer know, where we headed on this path
Pen my words, just forget it, waiting on the crash

Documenting life, I am Mr Werner Herzog
’72 Aguirre, this is the wrath of God”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Letter 19

“Good leaders train and invest in other people to become leaders. Bad leaders hold on to power until they die. They want to die in the positions they are having.”
― De philosopher DJ Kyos

“[President Franklin Roosevelt] was a great tickler of sacred cows not bred on his own pastures.”
― Alistair Cooke, Talk About America: 1951-1968

“I would argue that one of the most consistent challenges throughout the history of the American presidency is how often racial concerns captured the attention of the president. From the troubling history of the treatment and the wars against Native Americans to the pervasive shadow that was slavery to the calls to address racial violence whether it was the lynching epidemic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or the murder of Trayvon Martin to the calls for equality from a rainbow coalition of people of color, presidents from George Washington to Donald Trump have often found themselves mired in the politics of race.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III, A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump

“President Bush, whose early affirmation of the need for the [Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture] to have a home on the National Mall was significant, and the first lady were genuinely interested and soon became invested in the success of the museum. President Bush had placed African Americans like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice in sensitive senior positions that had been unobtainable in earlier administrations. And he genuinely hoped that his actions might address the problem of the lack of diversity within the Republican Party. I also believe, whether directly or indirectly, that the destruction that accompanied Hurricane Katrina, the high percentage of African Americans who perished as a result of the storm and the inadequate response by his administration, informed his attitudes towards the museum.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III, A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump

“Mr. Obama has always been at heart a healer, a reconciler eager to find common ground with people who hated him for ideological, political and racial reasons. It is a primary reason for his political success and status today as the most admired political figure in our culture.”
― David W. Blight

“In the history of American democracy, we have had undisciplined presidents. We have had incurious presidents. We have had inexperienced presidents. We have had amoral presidents. Rarely if ever before have we had them all at once.”
― Anonymous, A Warning

“This country, America, has been around for over 240 years and we have never had one president who was assassinated by a person with no ties to the U.S. government.”
― James Thomas Kesterson Jr

“Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership either in the legislative branch or the executive branch of our government.”
― Margaret Chase Smith

“He would not bend on anything he considered a matter of principle, no matter what the possible cost to his own happiness. And with Adams, practically everything was a matter of principle.”
― James Traub, John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit

“To know [John Quincy Adams] is not to love him. It is, however, to admire him greatly.”
― James Traub, John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit