Top 100 Quotes About Presidency
#1. Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration.
Robert Dallek
#2. I'm running [ for presidency] because we need to take our country back.
Bobby Jindal
#3. It is often written that, during his presidency, the General was not a politician. Of course, he was a great politician in large part because he was not perceived as a politician. It
John Ripin Miller
#4. I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.
Henry Adams
#5. Through the potent example of his own life, President Obama enabled us to believe the best about America, and, therefore, about ourselves. That uplifting narrative - essentially equating the promise of America with his extraordinary life story - swept candidate Obama into the presidency.
Cynthia P. Schneider
#6. I think my dad's post-presidency, he didn't miss a beat. He didn't get into any kind of 'Woe is me.' He dusted himself off and led an incredible life since 1993.
Jeb Bush
#7. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, if your standard-bearer for the presidency is not doing well, it's gonna reflect on the down-ballot.
Tommy Thompson
#8. I think that is also something he [Barack Obama], in the beginning of his presidency, he couldn't really explore and couldn't show. He had to be almost a one-dimensional, stoic leader during that first election.
Jordan Peele
#9. [A]n Obama presidency would be an amusing approximation of the Carter administration, complete with vaporous moralizing and foreign policy bungling.
Emmett Tyrrell
#10. A healthy environment, a strong economy and energy independent America - that would be the purpose of my presidency, is break the strangle hold that people enjoy on fossil fuels who hate our guts.
Lindsey Graham
#11. You have an imperial presidency that makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout.
Allen West
#12. I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.
Barack Obama
#13. Reagan was an exceedingly likeable guy, just a heck of a nice fellow, despite his politics. He was funny and loved a good joke, the dirtier, I'm afraid the more ethnic, the better. I don't think he brought very much to the presidency, except charisma and success.
Walter Cronkite
#14. Extremism is the pursuit of the presidency is an unpardonable vice. Moderation in the affairs of the nation is the highest virtue.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#15. Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.
Rick Perlstein
#16. I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated.
Angus King
#17. I am happy and proud that during one year of presidency, my initiatives have been strongly supported by the people and society and we have launched the process of vitally important state reforms.
Dalia Grybauskaite
#18. The earlier practice of the Church had been more or less to employ in worship under the presidency of the pastor or pastors, the gifts of the congregation.
Robert Rainy
#19. And Lincoln, as would be evidenced throughout his presidency, was a master of timing.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#20. As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it.
Nancy Gibbs
#21. Beguiled by George S. Bush's easy smile and casual indifference to the details, we are on the brink of electing him to office. This isn't choosing a president, it's casting the lead in a sitcom about the presidency.
Roger Ebert
#22. The Sudan bombing is a blot on the Clinton presidency, and a blot it ought to remain.
Timothy Noah
#23. Bush's presidency is revisionism-proof. We're going to be recovering from it for the rest of our lives.
Michael Moore
#24. My hope is that that person will come forward that can win the presidency that we can all get behind.
Rick Perry
#25. Many of the most highly publicized events of my presidency are not nearly as memorable or significant in my life as fishing with my daddy.
Jimmy Carter
#26. Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I'm comfortable with the fact that I won't be around to hear it. That's a decision point only history will reach.
George W. Bush
#27. Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work, over-mortgaged, and worried that life will be even tougher for their children.
Ron Fournier
#28. Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington
regardless of who wins the Presidency.
James Bovard
#29. What people have got to remember is that Sept. 11 happened in 2001 and not in 2003. It was planned under the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Jack Straw
#31. I don't buy the argument that there can't be a successful independent candidacy for the presidency of the United States. People who say, 'It can't happen,' are many of the same people who said we'd never elect an African American.
Mark McKinnon
#32. Having been in the presidency from the time of Mandela to that of Zuma, I am one of the privileged few who has seen it all, rather than hearing it via the grapevine. The challenge is say 'the things I could not say' in a responsible way that helps the country to move forward rather than backwards.
Frank Chikane
#33. In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference.
Dan Quayle
#34. Kennedy did not have to run the risk of having his ideas and his words shortened and adulterated by a correspondent. This was the television era, not only in campaigning, but in holding the presidency.
Hugh Sidey
#35. Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.
Eric Alterman
#36. Clearly, the Obama presidency hasn't wiped out racial prejudices.
Ron Fournier
#37. Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency.
Robert Caro
#40. I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question.
Victoria Woodhull
#41. The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people.
Mike Pence
#42. With me it is exceptionally true that the Presidency is no bed of roses.
James K. Polk
#44. There is no office now closed to a Jew, including the presidency.
Jacob K. Javits
#45. The presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families.
Martin O'Malley
#46. I'd love to interview Bill Clinton. I know that might be a little boring, but he's so interesting and such an amazing guy. All he's done after his presidency ... he hasn't just sat around, he's been so active in so many charitable causes.
Damien Fahey
#47. I had not even thought of running for president until one day in 1991, at a small fund-raiser, completely unanticipated, someone stood up and said, 'Hey, Mario, in all the years we've supported you, we've never heard you talk about the presidency, and we want to know why not.'
Mario Cuomo
#48. John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.
Robert Dallek
#49. Through every victory and every setback, I've insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn't meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.
Barack Obama
#50. Trying to make the presidency work these days is like trying to sew buttons on a custard pie.
James David Barber
#51. Mitt Romney is predicting that as president, he will create 12 million jobs in his first term. Well, President Obama says a Romney presidency would result in lost jobs. Yeah, his and Biden's.
Jay Leno
#52. George Bush didn't campaign on, 'If you elect me, I'm going to be a great president to confront terrorism and launch a war in the Middle East' because nobody was thinking about it in the year 2000. But it became the defining issue of his presidency.
Mike Huckabee
#53. I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#54. People should make distinctions between the office of the presidency and the person who occupies it. You can respect the office even as you lose respect for the individual.
David Greenberg
#55. When people tell me that I became President on January 20th, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don't become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.
Ronald Reagan
#56. Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling.
Tom Brokaw
#57. I also believe that we have to protect our country and lead the world with strength and steadiness, and we have to unify our country and you know that's what I want the Democratic Party to stand for and that's what I hope my presidency will achieve.
Hillary Clinton
#58. I am very glad as well that it is a presidency built on a campaign that emphasized ideas. I hope it will be a presidency that will enable everybody to be part of and proud of.
Michael D. Higgins
#59. There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush's presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted 'from the gut,' and was economical with the truth until it disappeared.
Teju Cole
#60. I really thought, with my background growing up, and my service, and all that, I thought it would be enough for the presidency. But ... It sure was enough when I ran for Congress.
Bob Dole
#61. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.
Hunter S. Thompson
#62. Regardless of Bill Clinton's politics or personal life, he grew up in obscurity and was elected to the presidency - twice. Don't take that away from him, because then you take it away from every other kid in America sitting out there in a school bus with a big dream.
Mike Huckabee
#63. In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
#64. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed.
Frank Rich
#65. I have heard Mr. Romney's speech's many times on television and the radio and I have even read his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness and I must say that out of all the gentleman running for the presidency Mr. Romney is, in my opinion, the best one to fit the bill.
Angela Lansbury
#66. The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people.
Jose Antonio Vargas
#67. Obama had campaigned against Bush's ideas and approaches. But, Donilon, for one, thought that Obama had perhaps underestimated the extent to which he had inherited George W. Bush's presidency - the apparatus, personnel and mind-set of war making.
Bob Woodward
#68. I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.
Robert Scheer
#69. Harrison's 8,400-word inaugural speech was the longest ever, while his 30-day Presidency was the shortest.
George Washington
#70. If I were president of the United States, I would include Moslems in my presidency.
Jerry Falwell
#71. Should Hillary Clinton run for president, voters who ignore the difference between the image she seeks to project and the reality will have only themselves to blame if her presidency turns into a disaster.
Ronald Kessler
#72. A Romney presidency will be awesome unless you're poor, sick, gay, female, Mexican or a dog.
Andy Borowitz
#73. The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.
John Quincy Adams
#74. Beyond diversity, the story of Obama's influence on the courts is more complex. Indeed, it could serve as a metaphor for his Presidency: symbolically rich but substantively hazy. Obama took office after years of intense conservative focus on the courts.
Jeffrey Toobin
#75. I was dumbfounded by the stupidity of the Watergate break-in.
Gerald R. Ford
#76. Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.
Donald Trump
#77. Throughout Ronnie's presidency, there was an ongoing public discussion as to how much influence the first lady should have on the president. It's hardly a new problem. As long as mankind has lived in groups, there's always been a question of how to handle the boss's wife.
Nancy Reagan
#78. In the scheme of our national government, the presidency is preeminently the people's office.
Grover Cleveland
#79. There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.
James Bovard
#80. I believe only foreigners should run for president ... Face it, the presidency is a lousy job. And who does lousy jobs we don't want anymore better than foreigners?
Bill Maher
#81. Mo Udall didn't want the presidency bad enough. He was too sane. He was a marvelous guy, but you had the feeling there was another Udall outside his body watching the candidate Udall who was too extravagant, telling him to cut it out.
Jack Germond
#82. The thing about looking back over Clinton's presidency, and probably anybody's presidency, is that when you look back, the events all line up in a way that makes sense. At the time, you don't know where it's going.
Dee Dee Myers
#83. Obama's pop-cultural focus may seem demeaning to the office of the presidency. It may be mockable. But it is also tremendously effective.
Ben Shapiro
#84. We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.
Steve Garvey
#85. I did though at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert.
Monica Lewinsky
#86. 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
#87. The presidency is probably the loneliest office in America. Regardless of your friends, regardless of how good your marriage is, regardless of anything, you are alone there at the top.
Robert Reich
#88. When historians look at the Obama presidency, they're likely to credit him especially for doing the politically unpopular things that were needed in 2009 to salvage the financial wreckage.
David Ignatius
#89. Marco [Rubio] is a gifted politician. He is incredibly gifted. And he needs to be able to do his job. He's going to be a great candidate [for presidency], for sure. But I think - he's a United States senator. He ought to show up.
Jeb Bush
#90. In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average.
Charles Krauthammer
#91. We have entered the era of the 'imperial' former presidency with lavish libraries, special staffs and benefits, around-the-clock Secret Service protection for life and other badges of privilege.
Lawton Chiles
#92. No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. When I joined the ANC, I never thought I would be anything. In no way, did I say, 'One day I could be the president. I think I am good material for the presidency.' Not at all.
Jacob Zuma
#94. It's clearly a budget. It's got lots of numbers in it.
George W. Bush
#95. I remember someone once asked Jack Kennedy why he was paying such close attention to the renovation of the square across from the White House, and he said, 'It may be the only thing my presidency is remembered for.'
Gloria Steinem
#96. What this [presidency] campaign is about this bringing millions of people jobs in this country.
Bernie Sanders
#97. The presidency of the Euro group is an interesting and important task.
Wolfgang Schauble
#98. In 2004, I joined my father, John Kerry, on the trail in his bid for the United States presidency.
Alexandra Kerry
#99. It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.
Al Franken
#100. The presidency has become a series of visuals I don't know how a woman fits into.
Patricia Schroeder