Quotes About Presidency

This is a column collection, or as one colleague called it, "history in real time," recounting my perspective on the highs and lows of this presidency from an African-American perspective. More than simply a column collection, the book has a substantial introduction that frames the [Barack] Obama presidency, explores the way Obama was treated by the political establishment and also how this first black president treated "his" people. In the epilogue, I use numbers to tell the story of African-American gains and losses during this presidency.

Lincoln was able to say, you know, "It will make me very unhappy if I lose the presidency, but I'm committed to larger things." If you look at candidates and say this is someone who can be happy to go back to their family or they have larger convictions. Franklin Roosevelt jeopardized his presidency by telling Americans in 1940, "We might have to fight Hitler." He loved being president, but he loved defending freedom more.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the burdens of the Presidency. Decisions that the President has to make often affect the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, but that does not mean that they should take longer to make. Some men can make decisions and some cannot. Some men fret and delay under criticism. I used to have a saying that applies here, and I note that some people have picked it up, If you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

One thing you had to learn [after the presidency] was that you no longer had the sense of responsibility that became ingrained in your system.

There have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. It was a really good tour. It seemed maybe about a week too long.

I serve on the Institute of the Black World's National Commission on African-American Reparations, and we have asked the President [Barack Obama] to, by executive order, establish a commission to study reparations. He can do this without Congressional approval. While I am not optimistic, I do hope that President Obama considers this in these waning months of his Presidency.

Impeachment is the direct constitutional means for removing a President, Vice President or other civil officers of the United States who has acted or threatened acts that are serious offenses against the Constitution, its system of government, or the rule of law, or that are conventional crimes of such a serious nature that they would injure the Presidency if there was no removal.

What he's saying is that a Trump presidency will address those kind of things head on without caving into the special interests like the teachers union, which Mrs. Clinton has completely sold out to.

When you look at the damage that many of the policies that Donald Trump has proposed can do to our citizens of the US - you can compare him to Major Storms Harvey, Irma, Maria. We're talking about life or death issues and about repealing the Affordable Care Act. There are lives at stake. Something that would affect millions and millions of people. I think it's totally appropriate. Obviously, it's a metaphor. It's not to be taken literally. But I mean that when I talk about the damage and the trauma that has been brought into our lives because of his presidency, that that's very real.

I ran [for presidency] because I knew what trouble our country was in.

Boris Nemtsov and I began to argue after Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. In my opinion, there was no longer a realistic chance to achieve regime change through peaceful political means, or real elections. Boris, on the other hand, never lost this hope. He felt that my assessment was premature and said: "You have to live a long time to see changes in Russia." He was deprived of that opportunity.

There is an ongoing effort to replace Donald Trump, to get him out of office. The media may not be leading it, but they are complicit in it. The media doesn't like Donald Trump and is doing what they can to undermine his presidency. They're doing what they can to discredit him.

I am comfortable knowing that I put my heart and soul into the presidency.

Chicago has always been a very segregated city and Mt. Greenwood is an example of that. I can't say I've seen organized white-supremacist growth, but I have seen racial tensions increase. I think we've all seen that. In the Barack Obama presidency, especially, the far right has considered diversity a code word for white genocide.

I've been privileged to see the presidency up close. And I know the awesome responsibility of protecting America and the incredible opportunity of working to try to make life better for all of you.

Obviously these conditions [violence, poverty] predate the [Barack] Obama presidency and the president has limited ways to dent this violence. But funding war weapons in cities, as opposed to more community policing, is not the solution.

I was pretty realistic to people about what we could get done, and the situation we were in, and trying to tamp down expectations. If you listen to my stump speeches, if you listen to what I said at Grant Park, I kept on saying, "Look, this is not just about me, this is not going to happen in one year, or one term, or even one presidency." And we tried to layer into everything we were saying a sense of hope, but also realism.

The American presidency will demand more than ringing manifestos issued from the rear of the battle. It will demand that the President place himself in the very thick of the fight; that he care passionately about the fate of the people he leads .

When you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns, from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama, his hometown, you have to have stop-and-frisk.

In 2004, I joined my father, John Kerry, on the trail in his bid for the United States presidency.

Arguably there's no school for any high position of leadership. That said, Theodore Roosevelt was remarkably well prepared for the presidency. He had held executive positions in the military, in local government, in the federal government.

Historically, things were moving in a pretty good direction until the Reagan presidency. And then it all got reversed. The Mexico City policy was instituted - the idea of wrecking the environment for this generation's profit and forgetting about our gets got firmly embedded. I'm sad to say the Clinton administration didn't turn it around and the Bush administration, well, I think they're the worst administration we've ever had, and I used to be a Republican.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

Contrary to what people say, my wife never turned me away from the presidency. She told me to reflect on it and do what I wanted.

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools.

In the experiences of a year of the Presidency, there has come to me no other such unwelcome impression as the manifest religious intolerance which exists among many of our citizens. I hold it to be a menace to the very liberties we boast and cherish.

If the Soviet empire still existed, I'd be terrified. The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now.

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.

I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.

The power of the presidency is important, but it is not determinative.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most influential woman in Washington - for what she has accomplished and for what she may yet do: win the presidency.

Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.

If the tide of defamation and abuse shall turn, and my administration come to be praised, future Vice-Presidents who may succeed to the Presidency may feel some slight encouragement to pursue an independent course.

There is no office now closed to a Jew, including the presidency.

If you give me the privilege of your vote tomorrow, that's what I will do every single day of my presidency, to knock down barriers, to create opportunities so that you have the chance to fill your own dreams. You see, I believe America's best days are still ahead of us.

I think anybody currently running for the presidency on the Republican side by default would be a huge improvement over Obama in every area, including foreign policy and the use of the military.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.

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.

Modern Democrats aren't the first political party to abuse power - far from it. Obama isn'€™t the first president to abuse executive power - not by a longshot. But he has to be the first president in American history to overtly and consistently argue that he's empowered to legislate if Congress doesn'€™t pass the laws he favors. It's an argument that's been mainstreamed by partisans and cheered on by those in media desperate to find a morsel of triumph in this presidency.

The next phase and this is part of what I'm interested in doing after I get out of the presidency is to make sure that I'm working with that next generation so that they understand you can't just rely on inspiration. There's a little perspiration involved in bringing about change too. That you have to be organized, that you have to vote even when it's not exciting.

Let's be honest, if the Democrats didn't support ignoring our nation's immigration laws, there is no way they could win the presidency or a local dog catcher election.

I was very surprised Barack Obama called Donald Trump "unfit to serve" during a press conference with the prime minister of Singapore. That is the sort of full-weight-of-the-presidency thing that I don't necessarily expect from Obama. So, why did he do it? I think he not only genuinely dislikes Trump but believes Trump would be dangerous as the commander-in-chief.

Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.

We`re seeing point to something that`s happened over the last eight years during the [Barack] Obama presidency, and that is the Democratic electorate over the last eight years has gotten a lot more liberal.

We all remember that [Donald] Trump was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement trying to delegitimize the presidency of our first African-American president Barack Obama, which is an outrage.

Four times Hillary Clinton has lost the presidency in eight years, a modern American record.

Watergate had become the center of the media's universe, and during the remaining year of my presidency the media tried to force everything else to revolve around it.

The presidency has become a series of visuals I don't know how a woman fits into.