Quotes About Being President

#1. Making music is like being the president: You can't tell people you're going to make health care free to get them behind you, but when you get that role, you don't do it.

Tyga

#2. Running for president is hard. But it's good preparation. Because being president is a lot harder.

Mark McKinnon

#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. You'll never see the president carry his own luggage, and why? Because even though we know he has luggage, it would reduce his stature if he was too much like us. We need to think of our leaders as being above us, even though they must still relate to us.

Simon Sinek

#5. Being president of the United States is the most stressful, thankless job in the world and Margaret can't fathom why anyone would voluntarily pursue it.

Elin Hilderbrand

#6. I presumed the president was being truthful until a series of events undercut that confidence.

Bob Graham

#7. Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail ... A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.

Abraham Lincoln

#8. Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president.

Henry Louis Gates

#9. The United States, the President said, "must be a force for good." Americans focused on "good." Much of the world focused on "force," on being handled.

Ron Suskind

#10. President Obama's approval ratings are so low now, Kenyans are accusing him of being born in the United States.

Jay Leno

#11. The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

Russell Baker

#12. What I find astounding is that we've had a president who is black in office for the past eight years, who gets most of his funding from the liberal elite in Hollywood. Yet, there are not very many roles for people of color. How can that be? And why is it just now being addressed?

Stacey Dash

#13. The president is under 50 percent approval ratings in all the battleground states. So, you could say that President Obama is defying gravity by still being in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. And one of the reasons that he is, is because the changing face of the electorate are giving him a small boost.

Mara Liasson

#14. There is one thing about being President
nobody can tell you when to sit down.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#15. I have learned something about the job of being the President's wife. She is not chosen by anyone except her husband and she really has no obligations except to him.

Lady Bird Johnson

#16. I am confident that I can serve my country without being involved as the president of the country now.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

#17. Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening.

William J. Clinton

#18. When he (Richard Nixon) took the oath of office, he pledged to be the president for 100% of the people, and I challenge the president to prove that he is being the president for 100% of the people.

Jackie Robinson

#19. I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation ... I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.

Ron Paul

#20. You will see the President being very, very tough on spending.

Donald Evans

#21. President Coolidge said, 'I don't want the Government to go into business.' Well, if I was Mr. Coolidge I wouldn't worry over that. The Government never has been accused of being a business man.

Will Rogers

#22. The thing about Barack Obama, just from being around him, is he's cooler than the other politicians, but just nerdy enough to do the job. Like you can't be really cool and be the president.

Chris Rock

#23. Here's the bigger problem with all this, we're not interrogating anybody right now. Guantanamo's being emptied by this president. We should be putting people into Guantanamo, not emptying it out, and we shouldn't be releasing these killers who are rejoining the battlefield against the United States.

Marco Rubio

#24. [President George W.] Bush - never mind his well-crafted set speeches; listen to him as he leans on a lectern, chatting to an audience of carpenters - is completely comfortable being himself, a skill still eluding Gore in his 55th year.

George Will

#25. The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball.

Eddie Vedder

#26. Accomplished a bit more for Bush than for Gore only because there were more question marks for Bush. I think he established that he possesses at least the minimum qualifications for being president.

Stuart Rothenberg

#27. I have zero interest in being vice president.

Sherrod Brown

#28. 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

#29. President Obama's policies have been categorical failures for our country. Unemployment is over nine percent, our deficits are growing, and small businesses are being burdened with regulations.

Timothy Griffin

#30. Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

Roy Blount Jr.

#31. 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

#32. We're no longer arguing about riding in the back of the bus, but being the bus driver or the president of the bus company. We're not pushing for the right to buy the hot dog, but selling the hot dog and the right to own the hot dog franchise.

Benjamin Hooks

#33. If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees.

John Cornyn

#34. I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.'

Warren Beatty

#35. In Chicago some anti-Mitt Romney protesters told reporters they're being paid to protest. They said they're being paid by Democrats to stand outside and chant anti-Romney slogans. Well, who says President Obama isn't creating any new jobs?

Jay Leno

#36. Being Vice President is difficult. Don't make it tougher.

Donald Rumsfeld

#37. Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#38. Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me.

Jack Nicholson

#39. Let me explain something you already know. I'm from Texas and we understand the nature of a border. From what I've seen, vigilant Texans are being ordered to stand down and allow criminals to pass. Mr. President, prepare to see Texans ignoring those orders.

Tommy Lee Jones

#40. The job of being president, understanding the particular policies that America has gotten itself into over the past 400 years.

Kwame Kilpatrick

#41. Do I think faith will be an important part of being a good president? Yes, I do.

George W. Bush

#42. I don't understand why, to rise to the level of being president of my country, one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters. We don't have to support our administrations to love our country.

Cindy Sheehan

#43. Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela announced Tuesday he will begin writing his autobiography. He spent 25 years in prison before being elected to public office. In America, we do it the other way around.

Argus Hamilton

#44. President Obama , I guess, is starting to confess to some of his anxieties. In a recent interview, President Obama said, 'I miss being anonymous.' He said, 'In the old days, I could blend in with all the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.'

Conan O'Brien

#45. I am president now, and tired of being kicked around.

William Howard Taft

#46. Once you're done being president, you tend to want to defend your record more than plumb your inner feelings. I find it hard to imagine Obama going home at night and writing sensitive, introspective journal entries about his meeting with John Boehner.

Gail Collins

#47. I made a mistake by being ejected from the presidency. Next time, I will choose a Cabinet which will allow me to be life President.

Nelson Mandela

#48. Barack Obama being President of the United States doesn't mean racism has disappeared. It's all a process, and we have to be aware that the work never ends.

Misty Copeland

#49. Before I was born [my father] wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which he thought would help. It was easy for him to think I could be president: he didn't have to worry about being president himself, being ineligible because he wasn't born in the United States.

Calvin Trillin

#50. President Bush earned $400,000 for his job as president last year. That's not really that much for being president when you think about it. But President Bush, he doesn't do it for the money, he does it for the eight months of vacation every year.

Jay Leno

#51. When Governor Romney was out here, I told him, I said, 'we are following the formula of streamlining regulations, being job creating friendly, balancing budgets, cutting taxes, and, you know, using common sense. And if you get to be president, we are going to do more of that.'

John Kasich

#52. There was always this sense, even early on in the campaign, that if the senator Obama could score this upset victory in Iowa, that there was a pretty good chance that he would end up being president of the United States.

Josh Earnest

#53. The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Ferdinand Mount

#54. Being really good at 'learning how to learn,' as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever.

Thomas Friedman

#55. For some reason, President Obama is being heckled about "don't ask, don't tell," which may be revoked. The president wants gays to be allowed to serve openly in the military.

Bill O'Reilly

#56. Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history.

Robert Dallek

#57. There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run.

Barbara Bush

#58. Congratulations to President Obama on being reelected president of the United States. Turns out it is not all bad news for the Republicans. It seems that depression is covered by Obamacare.

Jay Leno

#59. I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties. He is not the legitimate president. This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.

Ken Livingstone

#60. Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days.

Julianna Baggott

#61. President Obama is in no danger of being judged by history as an eco-radical.

Jeff Goodell

#62. Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is.

Edward Kennedy

#63. I'm so proud to represent the people of South Florida. I was so honored when President Obama asked me to serve as chair of the Democratic Party. But there's one job I'm even more proud of, and that's being a mom to my three kids, Rebecca, Jake and Shelby.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

#64. I don't want my president to be a TV star. You don't have to be on television every minute of every day - you're the president, not a rerun of 'Law & Order'. TV stars are too worried bout being popular and too concerned about being renewed.

Bill Maher

#65. Whenever I look at the history of presidents I deeply admire - the one thing that I'm always struck by is persistence. It's a quality that's underrated. Being able to plough through, being able to stay buoyant in the face of challenges.

Barack Obama

#66. There is no basis to say I'm being coy about running for president. If I chose to explore the presidency, I wouldn't do it in a backward way. I'll say, 'I'm exploring the presidency.'

Mario Cuomo

#67. 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

#68. The president (George W. Bush) says let's have private accounts, and take the surplus money that's being gathered now in Social Security and put it into private accounts. That works.

Mitt Romney

#69. Perhaps the mistake I made at the start of my mandate is not understanding the symbolic dimension of the president's role and not being solemn enough in my acts. A mistake for which I would like to apologise or explain myself and which I will not make again. Now, I know the job.

Nicolas Sarkozy

#70. Being president means leaving one's name in the history book of which few men are authors. It is my fortune to be blessed with a proud name, one that parents will employ for generations to instill the values of honesty, independence, and above all, courage in their sons.

Grover Cleveland

#71. I feel the president is ignoring the opinion of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration, and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view.

Natalie Maines

#72. I never thought that the long haired, bearded guy I married in law school would end up being President.

Hillary Clinton

#73. Being a president is being a CEO, essentially.

Geraldo Rivera

#74. The point being we used to have a system that wasn't as rigged in how the tax structure functioned. The president [Barack Obama] and I have been trying to get rid of some of these loopholes for some time. Look, we have to change the corporate culture.

Joe Biden

#75. You now have the potential of 200 people deciding who ends up being elected president every single time

Barack Obama

#76. I don't see where people get all this bull about the kid who's gonna be President and being a newsboy made a President out of him. It taught him how to handle his money and this bull. You know what it did? It taught him how to hate the people on his route. And the printers. And dogs.

Studs Terkel

#77. Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.

John F. Kerry

#78. In fact, the president was being portrayed as the perfect person in the situation and that damn sure wasn't the case. Hurt

Nako

#79. Don't you think that being a person of faith has become a third rail in American politics? If you want to run for president nowadays, you'd better get out there and say you're a very faith-based person.

Bill Maher

#80. I think the president's quite comfortable being the underdog. I think he's happy to run this race from - as if he were behind the whole time.

Robert Gibbs

#81. President Clinton not only benefits by gay and lesbian votes, but he benefits by showing the nation that he is a strong leader who implements his beliefs, who stands firm by those who he believes are being treated unfairly, and I think people respect that kind of leadership in the country.

David Mixner

#82. Obama's got a great sense of humor, but mainly he has a great thinking presence, which is uncommon. It's hard to imagine being able to do, think over answers and deliver them on television. If I were president I would constantly be spluttering.

Roy Blount Jr.

#83. The president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive. The reality is the NSA has saved thousands of lives not just in the United States but in France, Germany and throughout Europe.

Peter King

#84. I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.

Dee Dee Myers

#85. President Obama recently sat down with ESPN and said the NCAA should reduce the shot clock for basketball games. Then he said, 'And while we're at it, is there any way they can reduce the 'being president clock?'

Jimmy Fallon

#86. I like being president because i get a cool house

Barack Obama

#87. On being told of the death of former President Calvin Coolidge: How could they tell?

Dorothy Parker

#88. I love Obama, and I love the fact that it's a black president of the United States of America, but he's not the first black president. Robert Mugabe is a black president, too, so let's not get to talking about precedents being set.

Lupe Fiasco

#89. President Bush's approval ratings have taken somewhat of a dive. A senior slump, if you will. Leading President Bush to one conclusion: He is the only one who realizes what a great job he's being doing.

Jon Stewart

#90. Being president of a major public university is the most political nonpolitical office around.

Gordon Gee

#91. I applaud anyone who wants to take on the load that comes with being President of the United States. You really have to love your country to place yourself in that position.

BeBe Winans

#92. The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist.

Ann Coulter

#93. Alan shrugged. "I love the CBC, really, but being voted its president - " "Co-president," Sputnik corrected. " - is kind of like being declared King of Nerds." "Co-king," Sputnik asserted.

J.M. Richards

#94. I don't intend to spend my morning being lectured to by a president whose failed policies have put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt.

Jeff Landry

#95. I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn't very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing.

Warren Bennis

#96. 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

#97. You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about.

Barack Obama

#98. In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary.

Jodi Kantor

#99. I'm the commander
see, I don't need to explain
I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president.

George W. Bush

#100. You know, my dad served in the President's Cabinet after his time as a governor. He told me he enjoyed being governor a lot more. Now, I understand why. If I do my job well, I can make a difference in people's lives and I can help our children realize their dreams.

Mitt Romney