Dick Cheney Quotes

The Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security.

It’s clearly established in terms of training, provision of bomb-making experts, training of people with respect to chemical and biological warfare capabilities, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Iraq for training and so forth.

Westerners know the difference between a talker and the real deal. If Rick Perry wasn't right to be governor of Texas, why should he be president?

I think there’s no question but what the tail end of the Bush administration, Bush-Cheney administration, that we took steps specifically geared to try and free up the financial sector.

I've worked for four presidents and watched two others up close, and I know that there's no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office.

I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.

Cheney, Cheney, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide.

We must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary.

I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.

You know, in this business, you don't have any control over what the press says and how they portray things. And that's their prerogative. But I think anybody who looks at it objectively has trouble making the case that somehow this is a bad economy.

I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.

We do know, with absolute certainty, that Saddam Hussein is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

I had a reputation of being somewhat moderate, partly, I think, because I wasn't a 'bomb thrower' like some of my conservative colleagues, and partly because I got along with people all across the political spectrum.

My own belief is that the way we grow the economy, create jobs, create wealth is in the private sector. The government doesn't do that.

I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11.

I wake up every morning literally with a smile on my face, grateful for another day I never thought I would see.

I've been extraordinarily fortunate that I've been able to go live a very active, stressful life. And I don't believe that my heart disease changed me for the worst.

You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there.

We urge all democratic nations and the United Nations to answer the Iraqi Governing Council's call for support for the people of Iraq in making the transition to democracy.

I reached a point towards the end on the old heart where I had trouble getting out of a chair. All I wanted to do was get out of bed in the morning and walk to my office and sit back down in the chair. Now I throw 50 pound bags of horse feed in the back of my pickup truck and I don't even think about it. I'm back doing those things.

We live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say, 'You get to live free and you don't.' That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. Like Joe (Lieberman), I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.

You know, I've got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake.

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.

I think the key that happened on 9/11 is we went from considering terrorist attacks as a law enforcement problem to considering terrorist attacks, especially on the scale we have on 9/11, as being an act of war.

People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them: How do you think I got the job?

You've got a job to do, and because you've got a job to do, you've got to focus on that, so you don't have time for personal considerations.

Except for the occasional heart attack, I never felt better.

I think the record speaks for itself. These are two individuals who have been for the war when the headlines were good and against it when their poll ratings were bad.

His regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists.

I have argued in the past, and would again, if we had been able to pre-empt the attacks of 9/11 would we have done it? And I think absolutely. We have to be prepared now to take the kind of bold action that's being contemplated with respect to Iraq in order to ensure that we don't get hit with a devastating attack when the terrorists' organization gets married up with a rogue state that's willing to provide it with the kinds of deadly capabilities that Saddam Hussein has developed and used over the years.

We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed - something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States.

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults.

We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.

Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.

I support the President's plan to amend the Constitution, banning same-sex marriage.

Europeans know that their great experiment in building peace, unity and prosperity cannot survive as a privileged enclave, surrounded on its outskirts by breeding grounds of hatred and fanaticism.

My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . [in] weeks rather than months.

I think you can not be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Two days ahead of schedule, the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraq.

It's not just Bin Laden or just those that are involved in the counterterrorism effort. We've gotta cast the net broader than that. But I think it's a - very special tribute that we all owe to the bravery and courage of the men and women in the intelligence and military business who performed so well to finally get it done.

The greatest threat now is a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities...there's a high probability of such an attempt.

The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States.

We have great information. They're going to welcome us. It'll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They're sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.

I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it.