Quotes About Presidency

Every president learns on the job because nobody`s really prepared for the kind of decisions that cross your desk every day. No one`s prepared for that. No vice president who has scended to the presidency has ever truly been ready for that. Certainly, no vice president who`s assumed the presidency in extremis, like Harry Truman, has been ready for that. But this Trump guy doesn`t seem to be ready for a career in government.

There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.

This last month has represented an unprecedented degree of action on behalf of the great citizens of our country. Again, I say it. There has never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time.

We need people to fight back. So many people are depressed, and they've become preoccupied with the negatives of this [Donald Trump] presidency. That can cripple people mentally.

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.

I'll remember the view out this window [from Oval Cabinet], because this is where we had our - the playground that we put in when Malia and Sasha came in. Being able every once in awhile to look out the window and see your daughters during the summer, swinging on that swing set, that made the presidency a little bit sweeter.

If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency.

Ever since I was a young man, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way - and I did.

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 think George W. Bush has a warm, engaging personality. But, you know, the presidency is more than just a popularity contest.

In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t otherwise win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the Presidency, and can’t win their fights in Courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left – a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy.

What this [presidency] campaign is about this bringing millions of people jobs in this country.

NATO was a wonderful idea. It was formed in 1949. We are as far away from NATO as NATO was when it was done in time from the presidency of Grover Cleveland.

I just didn't want to get out there anymore; I didn't want to get back into what I call 'the swamp.' And the other reason why is I don't think it's good for the presidency for a former president to be opining about his successor. President Obama's got plenty of critics - and I'm just not gonna be one.

The American Founding Fathers gave us courts, independent jurists. They left room for civil society, which meant that citizens could directly associate in order to bring pressure on their governments. And they gave us a free press. They understood that you might have in the presidency someone who wanted to arrogate power into themselves. And they believed that was dangerous, having just experienced King George. And so they built a balanced system.

I made friends during my presidency.

It was during George W. Bush's presidency that Iran mastered the nuclear fuel cycle, that they built covert facilities, that they stocked them with centrifuges, that they were spinning merrily away toward getting a nuclear-weapons program.

Our doctrinal obligation is to our own ancestors. This is because the celestial organization of heaven is based on families. The First Presidency has encouraged members, especially youth and young single adults, to emphasize family history work and ordinances for their own family names or the names of ancestors of their ward and stake members. We need to be connected to both our roots and branches. The thought of being associated in the eternal realm is indeed glorious.

I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

How exactly did [Republicans] win? I'd like to know. Because I sacrificed the last four months of my life to do it, excuse me, and we did it. And we did it by looking at the schedule and looking at, yes, the electoral map of 270 because that's how you win the presidency.

I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators.

In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.

[A]n Obama presidency would be an amusing approximation of the Carter administration, complete with vaporous moralizing and foreign policy bungling.

Lyndon Johnson who was the president who was executing that war, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek the presidency again. He would go to Paris and end the war in Vietnam. Well we were ecstatic.

I think that [Donald Trump] clearly was able to tap into a lot of grievances. And he has a talent for making a connection with his supporters that overrode some of the traditional benchmarks of how you'd run a campaign or conduct yourself as a presidential candidate. What will be interesting to see is how that plays out during the course of his presidency.

Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!

Trump hasn't really done anything yet to abuse his powers. I don't even know if he knows what all his powers are as president. And that worries me. He will learn. After he learns how the presidency works, he could become much more dangerous, because his personality doesn't change. Once presidents find their powers, they don't give them up. They use them.

Republican or Democrat candidate for Presidency ought to say: I look forward to working with the president to solve the problem. People expect us to come here to solve problems. And thus far, the attitude has been: Let's just kind of ignore what the president has said and just hope somebody else comes and solves it for us. And that's what I'd be running on. I'd be running on the economy and I'd be running on national security. But since I'm not running, I can only serve as an adviser to those who are.

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

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.

In 1891, during the Presidency of William Henry Harrison [Benjamin Harrison], electric lights were first installed in the White House, the residence of the leaders of our country. At that time, commercial electricity was not economically feasible, but President Harrison wanted to affirm his confidence in the technological capability of our country.

The problem is, there was plenty of trash talk during my presidency. A lot.

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

I would recommend any American who wants to understand where the government is going in the next four years of George W. Bush presidency to get a copy of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's a road map, and it's pretty frightening testimony. Their definition of where democracy should go in the Middle East doesn't include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan; it only includes Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

Stepping back from running [Donald Trump] positions is meaningless from a conflict of interests perspective. The presidency is a full-time job and he would have had to step back anyway.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the - the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you’re dealt?

We're getting to the point where we're impinging on democratic institutions in this country and I think, you know, it takes a certain - not a suspension of disbelief - but willingness to go along with other people to get the ship of state going forward. I'm not sure that happens in a [Donald] Trump presidency, frankly.

When we look at the Trump candidacy or we look at any Republican candidacy for the presidency that's been successful, they tend to win by the margin of black and brown and poor people and immigrants who do not vote.

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.

The single most remarkable (and revealing) fact of the Obama presidency may very well be the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street executives for the massive fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.

There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not at the level of the human frailties of particular monarchs or presidents. No one seriously contends that the American presidency should be abolished because Bill Clinton is a self-confessed adulterer. So why should the abolition of the British monarchy be contemplated because the same is true of Prince Charles?

All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.

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.

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.

[The American public demands] a sense of legitimacy from and in the presidency. There is more to this than dignity, more than propriety. The president is expected to personify our betterness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does and is, not just what he says, a moral idealism which, in much of the public mind, is the very opposite of politics.

I'd also remind people, if I were running for Presidency, that a long-term problem facing the budget is Social Security and Medicare.

My post-presidency is evolving.