Quotes About 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.

To me, the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done.

There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bushs presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted from the gut, and was economical with the truth until it disappeared.

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

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've written a book that hopefully will give people a sense of what [presidency] was like. I hope my friends read it and say, "Now I understand." I hope my detractors read it and say, "Well, I better understand."

I have never had to travel more than thirty seconds from home to office, and it's because of that that I've been able to maintain, really a family life that has nurtured and sustained me during this time [of presidency].

As the Trump presidency goes on, there will be a transcendency of power and culture and vision from the music scene, the art world that will find a voice and give hope to us all.

I was incredulous as the bias of the media in terms of the candidates [for presidency]. I was incredulous at the fake news.

I finally stopped fretting and tried to think of Donald Trump's election as an opportunity. I didn't shift my thesis but I added some lines, in the Blurred Lines introduction, to my description of the progressive awakening that has happened in this country over the last five years - "Trump's presidency is a macroaggression". I wanted Trump to be a specter from the book's outset.

This is a core principle of my presidency - if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

When people tell me that I became President on January 20th, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don't become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.

I made friends during my presidency.

The prospect of Hillary Clinton not winning the presidency opens up a vast dark hole, an unknown, beyond which it is impossible to know what would happen to race relations or anything else we, as a county, want to improve. It has surprised me that Trump has done so well. I used to think the clamor for Trump was simply part of the rightwing backlash against eight years of President Obama. But perhaps it is that and more than that. There is a lot of suspicion, fear, mistrust, anger and hatred out there.

We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.

The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is - and I mean this seriously - the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.

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.

I had the great privilege in 2011 and 2012 of learning a lot about what it takes to run for the presidency of the United States. It is one of the greatest challenges that any human being could take upon themselves.

[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.

It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.

The White House, as Warren Harding said, and I think accurately, is an alchemist. We find out the strengths, the weaknesses and the smarts and the dumbs of whoever those occupants are under the pressure of the presidency.

The media theme was, "June is when you win the presidency," because that's what they thought Hillary [Clinton] was doing. Hillary was running ads condemning [Donald] Trump, characterizing Trump, marginalizing Trump.

The new [Donald Trump] administration may not want the benefit of [Dan Fried] expertise in terms of figuring out what Russia is up to with us right now but I do. I mean, we can all benefit from it as a country as we figure out what`s going on right now with this presidency and with Russia in particular.

Anybody who is an ambitious politician would never ever aspire to a Vice Presidency. And yet, people find themselves in that position, and so, therein lies the rub.

Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don't think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam.

When you see how the President makes political or policy decisions, you see who he is. The essence of the Presidency is decision-making.

Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.

He was a great president in his first term; in his second term, he wasn't the same Grover Cleveland he was to begin with. ...Cleveland reestablished the presidency by being not only a chief executive but a leader.

Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.

[George W.] Bush's presidency was one of the great nightmares of my life to date.

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 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.

Obama entered the presidency trailing clouds of intellectual self-regard. His carefully cultivated persona was of a uniquely thoughtful, judicious, deliberative, evidence-driven man comfortable with complexity. The protracted consideration of Keystone supposedly displayed these virtues. Now, however, it is clear that his mind has always been as closed as an unshucked oyster.

We have to judge presidents not only by the long-term consequences of their actions but also by how they make citizens in their own day feel. One reason that Nixon never succeeded in his comeback campaign is that he had such a negative impact on public trust at the time of his presidency.

I've grown fonder for Hillary Clinton since she ran for the presidency. I think that it's emblematic of the Rolling Stones song, you can't always get what you want, i.e., the grail. Sometimes you get what you need. And whatever she's gotten over the last couple of years, being humbled or be it being humbled and see the proletariat come to bat for her, getting outside of the bubble, getting out of this man's shadow, not quite getting the job she wants but a great wonk job.

I think that the presidency really brings out the best in a lot of people.

I know that given great responsibility men sometimes change, but Mr. Nixon's Presidency would worry me.

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.

Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants...The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why.

President Bush bet his presidency-and America's world leadership-on the war in Iraq. Tragically, it looks as though he bit off more than the American people were willing to chew.

One of my strengths is I have a pretty even temperament. I don't get too high when it's high and I don't get too low when it's low. And what I found during the course of the presidency, and I suppose this is true in life, is that investments and work that you make back here sometimes take a little longer than the 24-hour news cycle to bear fruit.

Hillary Clinton does not know what she's doing on anything. Hillary Clinton wouldn't be where she is if her name wasn't Clinton. She doesn't have any stand-alone achievements, stand-out achievements and accomplishments that in any way recommend her to the presidency.

Since the Donald Trump election, which has involved this administration making direct attacks on press freedoms, you're actually seeing a certain amount of rallying and reinvigoration by the national press in terms of covering national issues and the presidency. The Washington Post and The New York Times, Mother Jones, ProPublica and a lot of other places, they've actually done some really strong work when confronted with this administration. But the resources that you used to have at state and local level aren't there anymore.

Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work, over-mortgaged, and worried that life will be even tougher for their children.

Well, Warren Harding, I have got you the presidency. What are you going to do with it?