American Leaders Quotes

#1. Faced with the crippling sanctions, Iran could simply decide it is paying too high a cost to pursue its nuclear program and could opt for negotiations and reconciliation with the United States and other members of the international community. This is clearly the preferred option of American leaders.

Richard Engel

#2. Our [American] leaders are so socialized as to address militarized threats by acting on the basis of a militarized mentality that the deep roots of problems are ignored.

Richard A. Falk

#3. I love the Mexican people; I respect the Mexican leaders - but the leaders are much sharper, smarter and more cunning than our [American] leaders.

Rand Paul

#4. Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa.

Pankaj Mishra

#5. American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.

Benjamin Netanyahu

#6. After World War II, American leaders were, in Dean Acheson's words, 'present at the creation' of a global order. Now at the end of the cold war, we desperately need that same vision, that leadership, that creativity to be applied to the governance of the global marketplace.

John J. Sweeney

#7. I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry.

Rodney Alexander

#8. We probably could more successfully resolve the North Korean nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning. We could successfully resolve what American leaders seem to perceive as an Iranian nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning.

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

#9. I've had some Democrat African-American leaders tell me they're really not all that comfortable with Obama as the lead at the MLK festivities 'cause he's not down for the struggle. He does not have that in his roots.

Rush Limbaugh

#10. The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

Richard M. Nixon

#11. The Affordable Care Act reduces the deficit considerably. I would simply point out to you that the Supreme Court has spoken, the American people have spoken, congressional leaders of both parties have spoken, and we're going to continue with implementation.

Jay Carney

#12. In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.

Elliott Abrams

#13. If our nation is to rebuild opportunity for future generations, it will require our elected leaders to realize that their responsibility lies not with their political party, but rather with the American people that they have been chosen to represent.

Ami Bera

#14. Business leaders should provide expertise in service of our country. My predecessors at GE have done so, as have leaders of many other great American companies.

Jeffrey R. Immelt

#15. Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.

Patrick Mendis

#16. What I see as the greatest threat to America is that the American people will put political pressure on their leaders to pull out of Iraq before we should.

Thelma Drake

#17. It's the American leadership that has not played the role it should be playing and that leaders in other countries have been playing.

Jeffrey Sachs

#18. Never had so much intelligence meant so little. The conduct of the war had been set by a series of lies that the leaders of the United States told one another and the American people.

Tim Weiner

#19. I work hard to stay cynical enough! I keep my expectations of our culture and our leaders low, low, low, and I do it so I don't have to be let down. And yet again I am lowballed by the brokenness of the American cultural machine.

Vinnie Tesla

#20. Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic ...

Bob Woodward

#21. Democrat leaders are not only out of the American mainstream, but are also out of the Democratic mainstream.

Virginia Foxx

#22. Our job as leaders is to find those innovators and release their mojo - lean startup-style - to serve the American people better.

Todd Park

#23. I constantly signal to the Iraqi leaders that our patience, or the patience of the American people, is running out

Zalmay Khalilzad

#24. For decades, community colleges have been the backbone of American workforce training. Because they are nimble and closely attuned to local community needs, they are inherently positioned to be influential leaders of the movement for a sustainable economy.

Ed Begley Jr.

#25. The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority.

Ali Khamenei

#26. Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach, of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders, particularly the president.

Ron Fournier

#27. There are reports that leaders from ISIS and al-Qaida met at a farm house in Syria last week, and agreed to work together against their common enemies. That story again: Two radical terrorist groups managed to do what two American political parties cannot.

Jimmy Fallon

#28. The American people rightly look to their military leaders to be not only skilled in the technical aspects of the profession of arms, but to be men of integrity

J. Lawton Collins

#29. Pat Robertson is an embarrassment to the church and a danger to American politics, .. It's time for Christian leaders of all stripes to call on Robertson not just to apologize but to retire.

Jim Wallis

#30. Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.

Edmund White

#31. Political leaders will only undertake bold climate initiatives if they know the American people want it.

Frances Beinecke

#32. American Psalms challenges Christian patriots to put aside personal agendas, prejudices and partisanship, and pray for our leaders as God commands.

Mike Huckabee

#33. The American people don't believe politicians. They don't believe business leaders or Hollywood celebrities or athletes or other supposed role models. And they certainly don't believe the news media.

John Yarmuth

#34. I think Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president of the United States. Let's not forget, this guy was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement, which was an effort to delegitimize the presidency of the first African-American president we have ever had.

Bernie Sanders

#35. Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

Kendrick Meek

#36. Today, diabetes is now epidemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association and other national healthcare leaders.

Tim Holden

#37. You know, this is a very strange phenomenon. I keep reading that in American newspapers, and I keep reading extensive speculations. I meet with the Chinese leaders periodically, and while I don't say they've endorsed the missile shield, it has not been in the forefront of their discussions.

Henry A. Kissinger

#38. Challenging leaders is as American as it gets.

Rick Santelli

#39. With Russia about to hold the Winter Games in Sochi, the country is open to pressure. American and world leaders must speak out against Mr. Putin's attacks and the violence they foster. The Olympic Committee must demand the retraction of these laws under threat of boycott.

Harvey Fierstein

#40. The goal of Latin American unity is highly ephemeral. Each country has its own set of goals and very different sets of leaders.

Riordan Roett

#41. I'm hoping that the administration and other thought leaders will succeed eventually in bringing the country back to the older idea that the American dream is having a career, getting a job, and getting involved in it, and doing well. That was the core of the good life.

Edmund Phelps

#42. American industry is spilling over with men who started life even with the leaders, with brains just as big, with hands quite as capable. And yet one man emerges from the mass, rises sheer about his fellows; and the rest remain.

Charles M. Schwab

#43. Without the media, the American people won't have the type of information they need to hold their leaders to account. The relationship between government and media has always been strained, and I think most of the time that's a healthy strain.

Dan Bartlett

#44. I have something else to ask you-to ask every American. I ask for you to pray for this great nation. I ask your prayers for leaders from both parties. I thank you for your prayers for me and my family, and I ask you to pray for Vice President Gore and his family.

George W. Bush

#45. It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.

William H. Calvin

#46. The American Right has an amazing ability to lionize leaders whose lives are the precise antithesis of the political values that define their image.

Glenn Greenwald

#47. Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.

Bernard Bailyn

#48. A White House dinner is the American family assembled, from labor leaders to billionaires, actors, architects, academicians and athletes.

Hugh Sidey

#49. And I think the American people look to the leaders to lead. They look to the leaders to take on the big problems. And the president deserves a lot of credit for doing that.

John W. Snow

#50. The American people deserve to know that their elected leaders play by the exact same rules that they play by and that their lawmakers' only interest is what's best for the country, not their own financial gain.

Kirsten Gillibrand

#51. I think having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House is going to send a very wonderful lesson to the American public that women can be strong, they can be tough, they can be effective, and they can lead this country as political leaders.

Ellen Malcolm

#52. The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

#53. American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife - but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren't just housewives, they were community leaders.

Betty Friedan

#54. There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.

Jonah Goldberg

#55. There were serious environmental problems left over from the Industrial Age, and the deterioration of the global climate seemed to coincide with political leaders who grew increasingly ruthless. The worst of these was Marko III, known to his American subjects as The Magnificent.

Jack McDevitt

#56. The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.

Nina Easton

#57. I think one of the most destructive things in terms of American security has been for all of our leaders, without exception in both parties, to identify Osama bin Laden as a gangster or as a madman, as an apocalyptic character who's out to destroy our civilization.

Michael Scheuer

#58. The American people want to have trust in their leaders.

David Plouffe

#59. It is easy to forget, since the Catholic Church is now the only large American religious denomination whose ecclesiastical hierarchy continues to oppose birth control, that only a century ago the leaders of nearly all churches were united in their resistance to any public discussion of the subject.

Susan Jacoby

#60. Our government leaders ... have made many mistakes in the past when they have lost sight of the sacred American values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We are at the brink of even graver mistakes and assaults on these values.

Samuel Dash

#61. Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.

Matthew Yglesias

#62. The American people, in their own families, they understand that you have to do that. You have to make the tough decisions. You have to get your budget. You have got to put it in order. And they expect their elected officials and their leaders to do likewise.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

#63. Until the American majority is willing to live within its means, it can hardly force its political leaders to do so.

Oliver DeMille

#64. There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics.

Miroslav Volf

#65. The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box.

Wesley Clark

#66. It's time for an American comeback ... where leaders in Washington listen to 'we the people.'

George Allen

#67. The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.

H.L. Mencken

#68. President Obama met with leaders of the American Indian tribes and they honored the president by giving him his own Indian name: Running Deficits.

Jay Leno

#69. Be careful of living your life based only on faith and signs, or you might find yourself standing in a South American jungle holding a glass of Kool-aid. Commonsense is the foundation of any good testimony.

Shannon L. Alder

#70. Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator. And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Zell Miller

#71. The bottom line is that we have entered an age when local communities need to invest in themselves. Federal and state dollars are becoming more and more scarce for American cities. Political and civic leaders in local communities need to make a compelling case for this investment.

Mick Cornett

#72. In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.

Paul Robeson

#73. It is a tribute to the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled.

Daniel Ellsberg

#74. Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

Ron Silver

#75. I think the most critical needs of the African-American communities aren't being addressed primarily because of decisions being made by Republican Congressional leaders.

Melissa Harris-Perry

#76. For years, American officials visiting China marvelled at how Chinese leaders could push through infrastructure projects and sweeping legislative changes without the complications of opposition and the niceties of voting.

Evan Osnos

#77. The American people expect and deserve a government that works and leaders who work together.

Bill Frist

#78. During the 2008 campaign, I strongly endorsed Barack Obama for president. I did so early, when many Democratic leaders - including many prominent African-American politicians - believed the safe bet was to back then-front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Douglas Wilder

#79. One reason the United States is one of three countries in the world that do not have any form of paid maternity leave is that many American business leaders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose any family-friendly policies. They scare people into thinking maternity leave will be a job killer.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#80. American special relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia blind us to their dreadful encroachments on human rights, as well as confer impunity on their leaders with respect to accountability for crimes against humanity.

Richard A. Falk

#81. All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery - Senators John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, President James Buchanan, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, architect of the Dred Scott decision, and the main leaders of the Confederacy - were Democrats.

Dinesh D'Souza

#82. When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind, and the leaders abandoned their posts, the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone. The void was filled by the default force in American life, organized money.

George Packer

#83. Everyone matures. When I was Newt's age, I thought I had the right answer to things. The baby-boomers as political leaders are still on trial by the American people.

Pete Du Pont

#84. The American people must mature. We are an adolescent lot, expecting solutions to insoluble problems and perfection in our leaders.

George Friedman

#85. It remains to be seen whether the more optimistic scenario for Sino-American relations can be realised. Much rests on the shoulders of the two leaders: Obama on this score has so far been disappointing; the early signs are that Xi is a highly confident leader who thinks big.

Martin Jacques

#86. was an eighth cousin of Churchill, and a sixth cousin, once removed, of FDR - and three of World War II's great leaders were thus linked by American intermarriages.

William Manchester

#87. Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.

H.L. Mencken

#88. Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.

Rick Perlstein

#89. Instead of attacking successful American companies, Europe's leaders should ask themselves why their continent has not produced a Google or a Facebook.

Anonymous

#90. The American dream is shrinking because some of our leaders want it to shrink. Decline, in other words, has become a policy objective. And if this decline continues at the current pace, America as we know it will cease to exist. In effect, we will have committed national suicide.

Dinesh D'Souza

#91. There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

Alan K. Simpson

#92. Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch 'American Idol' and video their children's concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.

Jodi Picoult