President Washington Quotes

#1. We need to change the focus from celebrating sales at the mall to celebrating the significance of President Washington's birth to the birth of our nation.

Frank Wolf

#2. The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

Henry Adams

#3. There are some days when history is made. Yesterday was one - and I was honoured to be in Washington to watch Barack Obama being sworn in. During his soaring inaugural address, the new president gazed over a teeming National Mall that was crowded with more than a million people.

Des Browne

#4. For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.

Sydney Pollack

#5. I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.
(Washington DC, 12 May, 2008)

George W. Bush

#6. What we did, what every president since Washington has done, was provide a measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a realistic threat assessment.

Max Brooks

#7. A bank in Washington was robbed by two men in George W. Bush masks. Luckily, right afterwards two guys in President Obama masks came and bailed the bank out, so everything is fine.

Conan O'Brien

#8. Our superhero foreign policy draws rivers of taxpayer dollars toward the center, empowering Washington at the expense of local governments. It also empowers the president at the expense of Congress in ways that upset the balance that the authors of the Constitution took great pains to design.

Ian Bremmer

#9. The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Mr. Gehry and the values he promulgates.

Leon Krier

#10. Giving governors more leeway in administering health care could represent a small, positive development in the ongoing saga of Obamacare. Unfortunately, instead of choosing flexibility, President Obama and his left-leaning advisers always default to rigid 'Washington knows best' answers.

Fred Upton

#11. We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president.

William J. Clinton

#12. President Barack Obama has it right - there is a lot to change about Washington. The problem is, not much will get changed unless we confront the runaway filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

Peter Fenn

#13. The president said that he would unite this country, that he was a uniter, not a divider. Have you ever seen America more divided? Have you ever seen Washington more divided?

John Edwards

#14. It's the [George Bush] president's fiscal policies that have driven up the biggest deficits in American history. He's added more debt to the debt of the United States in four years than all the way from George Washington to Ronald Reagan put together.

John F. Kerry

#15. Remember Henry Adam's jest that the succession of presidents from Washington to Grant disproved the theory of evolution?

George Will

#16. Today Prince William went to Washington, D.C., and he met with President Obama. He said, 'It feels weird being in the White House because I'm not an American.' And then Prince William said, 'Yeah, me too.'

Craig Ferguson

#17. When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.

George Washington

#18. Today the Washington Post did an article; they compared the 2008 presidential election to the 1932 presidential election. They did a comparison, mainly because 1932 was the first time John McCain ran for president.

Conan O'Brien

#19. I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.

Anna Quindlen

#20. This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. John Adams, U.S. President

George Washington

#21. [Speaking of Chinese president Sun Yat-sen] ... combined Benjamin Franklin and George Washington of China.

Calvin Coolidge

#22. As the Sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established

David McCullough

#23. President Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi represent what mainstream America is rejecting about Washington, D.C. And that is this out of touch with the people.

Sharron Angle

#24. George W. Bush in Washington decided that Nobel Peace Prize winner and ex-president Nelson Mandela could probably be taken off the U.S. list of terrorists).

Jonas Jonasson

#25. It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington. I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night.

Robert McNamara

#26. I heard somebody say, 'Where's (Nelson) Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas.
George W. Bush, on the former South African president, who is still very much alive, Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2007

George W. Bush

#27. When George Washington was elected president, there was no national vote.

Ben Nelson

#28. And again, President Obama's health care plan really is another drag on the economy. Until we get Washington out of the way, this president's recovery is going to continue to rank dead last.

Kevin Brady

#29. The passions and pain of the Vietnam War have subsided to a degree to which we are now able to look at the broader achievements of the Johnson administration," said playwright Robert Schenkkan, whose Broadway show about the president, "All the Way," is playing to packed houses.

The Washington Post

#30. President George Washington's namesake capital, once a marketplace for slave auctions, is now synonymous with democracy and freedom; so is the iconic Jefferson, who wanted to build an "Empire of Liberty" for the world.

Patrick Mendis

#31. Even the country's first president chafed at the limits placed on him by the writers of the U.S. Constitution. From the nature of the Constitution, ... I must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.

George Washington

#32. If you don't like the President, it costs you 90 bucks to fly to Washington to picket. If you don't like the governor, it costs you 60 bucks to fly to Albany to picket. If you don't like me - 90 cents.

Ed Koch

#33. They got some people that are saying, hey, elect me as president. Hey, Washington couldn't handle Si Robertson. Trust me.

Si Robertson

#34. In no instance have ... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people. James Madison, U.S. President

George Washington

#35. If the president finds time to help the mentally retarded, what are you doing that's so important? [Written underneath:] Working to get them out of Washington.

Robert Reisner

#36. Where gays and lesbians are the best organized and most concentrated in numbers are states that President Clinton must carry in order to be reelected in 1996. Among the states are California, New York, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois.

David Mixner

#37. Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.

Chris Rock

#38. If the President says, oh, Washington's got to change, and people are doubting whether my change can really happen, I think instead what the public's begun to see is the change they're seeing is not the change they voted for.

Eric Cantor

#39. President Clinton broke ground Saturday for the World War II memorial in Washington. He'll never have the military's full respect. However, after surviving ten female accusers, he's been made an honorary member of the Tailhook Association.

Argus Hamilton

#40. Whenever people say, 'You should be president,' I say, 'I thought you liked me.' Listen, I thought being mayor of Stamford was a wonderful job. Being governor of a state for a period of time is a wonderful job, and I'm not sure I'm at all attracted to Washington.

Dannel Malloy

#41. Some said America took a step forward electing a black president. In light of the unconstitutiona l expansion of powers, lack of transparency and fueling the fires of unrest that clearly hasn't been the case. Vote based on merits, not to fill a racial quota.

Denzel Washington

#42. Yesterday, President Obama prank-called a Washington radio station, calling himself 'Barry from D.C.' Then, just to mess with him, Obama called Glenn Beck's radio show as 'B. Hussein from Kenya.'

Conan O'Brien

#43. What is most important of this grand experiment, the United States? Not the election of the first president but the election of its second president. The peaceful transition of power is what will separate this country from every other country in the world.

George Washington

#44. In an interview with Univision, President Obama said if there's one thing he's learned, it's that you can't change Washington from within. So what is he saying - that if we want real change, we should throw him out?

Jay Leno

#45. If I am elected President, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump

#46. Quanah Parker. As the years went by he became a shrewd businessman, built a large house, and successfully managed his farm and ranch. He traveled all over the country, and went to Washington to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade.

Dee Brown

#47. Celebrating Christmas without Christ is like celebrating George Washington's birthday without mentioning the first president.

James N. Watkins

#48. Tonight, I concurred with President Bush when he stated that the decisions on future involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq should be left to the Pentagon and not politicians in Washington.

Howard Coble

#49. Nixon became the first (and to date, only) former Vice President to be elected President (every other Vice President who moved into the Presidency either succeeded upon his predecessor's death, or won election directly from the Vice Presidency).

George Washington

#50. As president, I'm committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

Barack Obama

#51. Lobbyists have more offices in Washington than the President. You see, the President only tells Congress what they should do. Lobbyists tell'em what they will do.

Will Rogers

#52. We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress, which played a big part in his administration's problems.

Jim Hunt

#53. Messrs. Washington and Lincoln would be appalled and saddened by what their successor, President Obama, and the modern Democratic Party are doing to the nation they dedicated their lives to keep alive.

Monica Crowley

#54. I think I've done more right than wrong on foreign policy. I've criticized the president for being weak and indecisive. I've been a problem solver in Washington and I think I've got something to offer the party and nation.

Lindsey Graham

#55. I would rank George Washington as America's greatest president, but he only had to defeat what was then the world's greatest military power with a ragtag group of irregulars and some squirrel guns, whereas Ronald Reagan had to defeat liberals.

Ann Coulter

#56. I have observed in my 30 years in Washington that when a President initiates a major policy speech on a controversial issue while Congress is in recess, it usually is because what he is advocating is indefensible and that he is seeking to minimize criticism.

Dana Rohrabacher

#57. I've just concluded - since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people, and enjoys an attractive countenance - thus if it becomes necessary, I shall travel to Washington, D.C., get down on my knee, and ask his hand.

Robert Mugabe

#58. We filed a constitutional rights lawsuit on my reservation, and I had to go out and interview all these old people. And I found that many of the old people on my reservation didn't know who was president. That kind of pointed out to me the irrelevance at times of who is in Washington.

Winona LaDuke

#59. In 27 years of reporting from Washington, I've never heard a President admit he made a mistake.

Sam Donaldson

#60. If Mr. Obama wants to get things done, he must recognize that in Washington only the president has the power to make the first big move.

Ari Fleischer

#61. Most people don't seem to appreciate a person as honest as me. So don't ask me how George Washington ever got to be president.

Jeff Kinney

#62. According to the latest poll in the Washington Post, 63 percent of Americans said that so far they approve of President Bush. Not surprisingly, the other 37 percent are English teachers.

Conan O'Brien

#63. I was with - he wasn't the president then, but - Barack Obama, when he was running, in Washington, during Black Congressional Caucus Weekend, and did a panel about global warming with him. It was almost as if I switched careers for a while, and became a political activist.

Lawrence Bender

#64. Over the weekend, of course, down there in Washington, D.C., they had the big White House Correspondents' Dinner. Do you know who was really funny? President Obama. So funny, in fact, he has already been promised 'The Tonight Show' in five years.

David Letterman

#65. I ran for president in order to be able to try to change Washington D.C. from the inside. Our federal government is broken.

Herman Cain

#66. There is no more important task in Washington than cleaning up the culture of corruption. Yet the president - whose White House has become the cradle of Republican corruption - is not taking responsibility for the costs of that corruption.

Harry Reid

#67. There have been many amazing Presidents in American history, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, all of whom I greatly admire.

Donald Trump

#68. Let's assume for the moment that the logic behind Presidents Day is actually sound for certain presidents. Why not have a separate holiday for Lincoln and one for Washington - as we used to do, before we became so concerned with the 'Every President Gets a Trophy' ethos?

Ben Shapiro

#69. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters." These people, by the way, don't represent Islam in any formal sense. They're not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam.

Edward Said

#70. It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference "the president" refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#71. Rand Paul is officially running for president. He even revealed his campaign slogan, which is 'Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.' It's hard to tell if he's running for president or doing an infomercial for Bowflex.

Jimmy Fallon

#72. For a bill to become law, it truly has to be the will of the people, and for a president to stop the will of the people and stop what you're trying to do in your state is not the role of Washington.

Nikki Haley

#73. 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

#74. What we need in Washington now is a strong Republican president who knows how to govern.

Chris Christie

#75. That tax relief can spur the economy and thereby benefit all Americans is something that Washington Democrats used to understand. President Kennedy, for example, aggressively cut taxes after being elected to stimulate the economy as a means of helping all Americans.

Mike Bouchard

#76. President-elect Barack Obama is starting to get an idea of just how hard his new job is going to be. Today, he said he wanted to bring a sense of accountability to Washington. I think they realized actual accountability, never going to happen.

Jay Leno

#77. George Washington, who said to his father, Dad, if I never tell I lie, how am I ever gonna become President? Never got a dinner!

Red Buttons

#78. Washington's character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.

Stephen Ambrose

#79. As an Independent, she has no party backing ... Her being the first Independent president trumps the fact that she's a woman. It causes even more upheaval in Washington than her being female.

Geena Davis

#80. In Washington, I found myself as a 31-year-old in a room with the president, vice president, and secretaries of state and defense, and I was unfazed by it. But get me around a rock star I grew up with and I have trouble completing sentences.

Joe Scarborough

#81. Today was opening day for the new Congress in Washington. And Vice President Joe Biden swore in the new batch of White House fence jumpers.

David Letterman

#82. MYTH 175. | George Washington was the first president of America. Peyton Randolph was the first American President but he was forgotten due to a technicality. When he was President, the United States was called The United Colonies of America.

John Brown

#83. As you may recall, Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953, thanks largely to the Korean War. Today, however, he is thought to have been a solidly good president, a 'Near Great' even, in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then.

Thomas Frank

#84. The president we have today is a typical Washington politician that's prone to hyperbole and decisiveness and false outrage. And I think it's very sad - very sad to watch.

Marco Rubio

#85. I think he should let me run Ohio. He should let us, the legislature, the members there, we should be running Ohio. The states are the laboratories out here, and I think the president needs to mind to the problems that he has in Washington.

John Kasich

#86. I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama!

Kerry Washington

#87. Whenever Congress was in session, we were in Washington. So four months out of the year we were in Tennessee and the rest of the time in Arlington, which is where my mom grew up. Then, of course, in 1992 we moved into the vice president's house in D.C. I was 15 then.

Kristin Gore

#88. As to the war with Japan, the President had already received my memorandum in general as to the possibility of getting a substantial unconditional surrender from Japan which I had written before leaving Washington and which he had approved.

Henry L. Stimson

#89. Most presidents come to Washington bright as freshly minted dimes and leave much diminished.

George Will

#90. When they ask me to become president of the United States I'm going to say, Except for Washington D.C.

Len Deighton

#91. With Barack Obama as president and the super-happening Michelle Obama as First Lady, you would think a new tone, a new tune, a kicky new jazzitude, would have entered Washington discourse, but it remains a landlocked island unto itself, held captive by its tribal fevers.

James Wolcott

#92. If you like Obama, if you like a Washington that offers free stuff and taxing the rich, that's what you get. I don't see him evolving as a president.

Nina Easton

#93. I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants ... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.

Helen Thomas

#94. According to some reports coming out of Washington today, President Obama said Kanye West is a 'jackass.' Not since 'yes, we can' has Obama found a slogan so many Americans can get behind.

Conan O'Brien

#95. I know the president is quick. I have friends who played with him during the campaign; they say he's very good. I told the president that whenever the next pickup game is, I'll get on the plane to Washington - but sometimes they play so early in the morning.

Dikembe Mutombo

#96. If you want a president who will upend the status quo in Washington, D.C., and appoint justices of the Supreme Court who will uphold the Constitution, we have but one choice, and that man is ready. This team is ready. Our party is ready and when we elect Donald Trump, the 45th president.

Mike Pence

#97. In Washington, if you're a congressman or a senator or the President, you make much more money than the average American, but you'd think that if you were the leader of the free world you'd be making major bank, and you don't.

Beau Willimon

#98. The Constitution did not even go into effect when Washington was inaugurated first President. The wisest men knew that it was only a figment of the imagination then.

Charles A. Beard

#99. But make no mistake, the President will find in our new majority the voice of the American people as they've expressed it tonight: standing on principle, checking Washington's power and leading the drive for a smaller, less costly, and more accountable government.

John Boehner

#100. We got to do a few things with President Clinton. To be invited to Washington again to play with Ashanti and all those other cool people there in front of President Bush and the rest of the world feels awesome. I'm really looking forward to going.

Darius Rucker