Dick Cheney Quotes

We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

The threat is there. It's very real and it's continuing. And what the Obama people are doing, in effect, is saying, well, we don't need those tough policies that we had. That says either they didn't work, which we know is not the case - they did work, they kept us safe for seven years - or that now somehow the threat's gone away. There's no longer a threat out there, we don't have to be as tough and aggressive as the Bush administration was.

The only thing left that shows I was a heart patient is I have a scar down the middle of my chest where they went in three times to do open heart surgery. I have a brand new heart inside, and all the mechanical and electronic gear and so forth is all gone.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies... That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any.

President Bush gave me a tremendous opportunity to serve as the vice president. I enjoyed very much having the opportunity to be a part of his team. He told me at the outset, he wanted me to sign on to be a part of his team - and he was true to his word, kept it. He was tough. He was decisive. He was also a pretty good politician.

Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual - America sees two John Kerrys.

The bottom line is that we've had enormous successes (in Iraq) and we will continue to have enormous successes.

We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. ... Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to kill four million Americans,... For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won't be hit again.

There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.

I've been criticized because I've had the temerity to speak out and done a couple of interviews since I left office. I don't find anything surprising about that. I don't say - I've been careful not to get personal in terms of my criticisms for my comment, but I think the issues are simply too important for the future of the nation for us to operate as though those of us who disagree somehow shouldn't speak out and be heard. I think we need to be heard.

The biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that.

I worry that we're seeing a situation- Obama's administration not only committing us the huge deficits for the future, but is also redefining the relationship between government, on the one hand, and the private sector on the other.

We now have irrefutable evidence that [Saddam] has once again set up and reconstituted his program to take uranium, to enrich it to sufficiently high grade, so that it will function as the base material as a nuclear weapon. And there's no doubt about the fact that the level of effort has escalated in recent months.

I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on.

I - obviously, I'm not a big fan of President Obama. I think he's been one of our weakest presidents. I just fundamentally disagree with him philosophically.

I'm often asked why I left politics and went to Halliburton and I explain that I reached the point where I was mean-spirited, short-tempered and intolerant of those who disagreed with me and they said 'Hell, you'd make a great CEO', so I went to Texas and joined the private sector.

The Federalist Society has made important contributions to the nation's understanding of our constitutional heritage.

I think we need a very, very serious effort, primarily through tax policy to provide incentives and encouragement for people to save and invest and expand their businesses and to create more jobs. The kind of thing we did in the early Reagan years, 30 years ago. I think that's essential.

I got to be White House chief of staff, ten years of congressman, secretary of defense, vice-president. If you're a political junkie like I obviously am - that was - every one of those was just a tremendous experience. I'm very comfortable with what I did and why I did it and how I did it. And I'll let others judge whether they liked it or not.

The plan was criticized by some retired military officers embedded in TV studios. But with every advance by our coalition forces, the wisdom of that plan becomes more apparent.

I think freedom means freedom for everybody.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

Unfortunately, we don't have the option of marriage in our country. We could go to Britain or Spain or Argentina and do something symbolic, but that's not what I want. I want to have the rights of anybody else in my home country. I don't want to be a second-class citizen

Direct threats require decisive action.

Once we got hit by - on 9/11 and lost 3,000 people that day, we recognized, and it was one of the key decisions President Bush made, that this is not a law enforcement problem, it is a strategic threat to the United States. It's a war. And based on that, we then adopted a whole set of policies that flowed out of that proposition.

From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we're engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.

I think I was able to survive five heart attacks because I never postponed going to the hospital when something didn't feel right.

You cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they're easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions; they go up; they go down.

Sarah Palin is an attractive candidate, but based on her background, she only was governor for what, two years. I don`t think she passed that test.

The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over.

I think Barack Obama is a one-term President.

It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

One of the reasons the deficit got as big as it did, frankly, was because of the economic slowdown, the fall-off in deficits, the terrorist attacks. A significant chunk was taken out of the economy by what happened after the attacks of 9/11.

When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around.

Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense the nation has ever had.

The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I'm not at all sure that that's what the Obama administration believes.

I'm not apologetic with respect to the policies of the Bush administration. I think we basically got it right.

Like many Americans, I've always been intrigued by Bill Clinton. I obviously didn't always agree with him - enjoyed running against his legacy in 2000, when Al Gore was his designated successor, but I don't have anything negative I would say about Bill Clinton.

[Saddam Hussein is aggressively seeking nuclear and biological weapons and ] the United States may well become the target.

After 9/11 we were prepared to use military force. We were prepared to go after not only the terrorists, but those who sponsor terror and provide sanctuary and safe harbor for them. We were prepared to use our intelligence assets the way we would against an enemy that threatened the United States itself, to put in place, for example, things like the Terror Surveillance Program and to have a robust interrogation program on detainees. Those are the acts you take when you feel you're at war and that the very existence of the nation is threatened.

If we're successful in Iraq ... we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish.

I did my 40 years in Washington, 40-plus, and it's time to pause and reflect and think about what I've seen and done.

My own personal view is that people ought to have the right to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. With respect to how that's affected or regulated by the State, those are State decisions. Different States are likely to make different decisions based upon their own wishes and desire of the people of the State, and that's perfectly acceptable.

Instead, the terrorists see just what they were hoping for, our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

And the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people that went through those training camps in Afghanistan. We know they are seeking deadlier weapons - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons if they can get it.

I do find that the mainstream media oftentimes is what I would consider off base or has a bias.