Presidents are not permitted to have personal feelings.

I don't know in my long life that I ever worked with anybody that has quite the combination of policy knowledge and concern, political skills, of a personal touch with people, and a sense of innate fairness that inspires confidence.

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

Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell.

You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say.

Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.

For four years we've been cooperating exhaustively