“I greatly fear that my countrymen will expect too much of me.”

Ben Franklin said: “One of the greatest captains of the age.”

“What do we mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was affected from 1760-1775, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.”

(On slavery) “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Daniel Webster: “Madison had as much to do as any man in framing the Constitution, and as much to do as any man in administering it.”

“If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy…”

(About himself) “I am a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners: my political adversaries say, a gloomy misanthropist, and my personal enemies, an unsocial savage.”

“The sun of my political life sets in deepest gloom.” (after losing 1828 election)

(A toast about the U.S.)“Our Federal Union! It must and shall be preserved!”

“The Union, next to our liberty, is most dear!”--Vice-President John C. Calhoun’s toast in response

(about newspaper stories about him)

“Why the deuce is it that they have such an itching for abusing me? I try to be harmless, and positively good natured, and a most decided friend of peace.”

“Tippecanoe & Tyler too!”

(The last words to Vice- President John Tyler)

“Sir, I wish you to understand the principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.”

“His Accidency”

Henry Clay: “A president without a party.”

“Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on liberty of the human race.” (Tyler’s response to Andrew Jackson’s spoils system)

“There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress, as well as others, than I had any conception, before I became president.”

“He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”—Lincoln about Polk.

“I have no private purpose to accomplish, no party objectives to build up, no enemies to punish- nothing to serve but my country.”

“If it becomes necessary, in executing the laws, I will take command of the army myself, and , if you are taken in rebellion against the Union, I will hang you with less reluctance than I hanged deserters and spies in Mexico!”

(on slavery)

“God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.”

“Fillmore is a great man, but it takes pressure to make him show his highest powers.”

--Albany Evening Journal, 1843

“You have summoned me in my weakness. You must sustain me by your strength.”

(on leaving office): “There’s nothing left but to get drunk.” (He died of cirrhosis in 1869).

“If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in the country.” (Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln on Lincoln’s Presidential Inauguration)

“The Constitution provides for every accidental contingency in the executive, except for a vacancy in the mind of the president.” (John Sherman about President James Buchanan)

“ ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free; I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”

“Now he belongs to the ages… There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.”

--Edwin Stanton

“We must…avoid hasty assumptions of any natural impossibility for the two races to live side by side in a state of mutual benefit and good will.”

“Impeach me for violating the Constitution! Haven’t I been struggling ever since I have been in this chair to uphold the Constitution they trample underfoot!”

“God gave us Lincoln & Liberty; let us fight for both!”

“Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

“The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery- in fact, its only enemy.”

“It was a brilliant affair; the water flowed like champagne!” --Sec. of State William Evarts attended a party hosted by “Lemonade Lucy”

“The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.”

“I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured.”

“Men may die, but the fabric of our free institutions remains unshaken.” (after Garfield’s death)

“I am but 1 in 55,000,000; still, in the opinion of this 155 millionith of the country’s population, I would be hard to better President Arthur’s administration.” --Mark Twain

“Public office is public trust.”

“A man once sat in a president’s chair,

Singing Ve-to, Ve-to, With never a thought

of trouble or care, Singing Ve-to, Ve-to! --Song about President Cleveland who vetoed

more bills (413) than any previous president

“I want it understood that I am the grandson of nobody. I believe that every man should stand on his own merits.”

“If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations.”

“Ah, you may be sure that they will be no jingo nonsense under my administration.”

“Boys! Don’t let them hurt him…it must be some poor misguided fellow.” --

McKinley about Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who shot the president

“I fought beside the colored troops at Santiago, Cuba, and I hold that if a man is good enough to be put up and shot at, then he is good enough for me to do what I can to get him a ‘Square Deal.’”

“I always enjoy his society, he is so hearty, so straightforward, outspoken, and for the moment, so absolutely sincere.” –Mark Twain

“Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick.”

“Presidents come and go, but the Court goes on forever.”

“Taft meant well, but he meant well feebly.” --Teddy Roosevelt

“It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation.”

“There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind. It is the power of the united moral forces in the world, and in the Covenant of the League of Nations the moral forces of the world are mobilized.”

“That infernal skunk in the White House” –Teddy Roosevelt

“Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.”

“I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.”

“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered…it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.” –H.L. Mencken

“You lose.” (To a lady who bet she could get him to say 3 words).

“Civilizations and profits go hand in hand.”

“Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 35 million native born adult white males to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many whom are wise, pick out a Coolidge to be head of state.” –H.L. Mencken

“Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”

“Prosperity is just around the corner.”

“Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.”

“Hoover if elected, will do one thing that is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: he will make a great man out of Coolidge.” –Clarence Darrow

“Be sincere, be brief, be seated” (his advice on giving speeches)

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941- a date which will live in infamy…”

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

“A second-class intellect- but a first-class temperment” –Oliver Wendall Holmes

“2/3 mush and 1/3 Eleanor” –Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“Give me a 1-handed economist! All my economists say” ‘On the one hand…on the other…”

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”

“The Buck stops here.”

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

“The captain with the mighty heart.” –Dean Acheson

“History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

“I think someone must have written it for him, and I’m not sure he understood what he said. But, it’s true.” –Truman’s comment (after hearing the quote above).

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“I guess this is the week I earn my salary (start of Cuban Missile Crisis)

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”

“But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

“Come now, let us reason together…” (Johnson treatment)

“I knew from the start that if I left the woman I really loved (the Great Society)- in order to fight that war…then, I’d lose everything at home. All may hopes, my dreams…”

“And so tonight- to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans- I ask for your support.”

“For years, politicians have promised the moon. I’m the first one to deliver it.”

“Well, when the president does it that means it’s not illegal.”

“If he wants to do his country a favor, he’ll stay over there (on visit to China).” –Barry Goldwater

“Nixon’s motto was if two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.”—Norman Cousins (peace activist)

“I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.”

“America need recovery, not revenge. The hate had to be drained and the healing begun.”

“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration.” (TV debate)

“For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predcessor for all he has done to heal our land.” –Jimmy Carter

“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America.”

“I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president.”

“Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?”

“You can tell a lot about a man’s character by his way of eating jelly beans.”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.”

“Honey, I forgot to duck!” (to his wife Nancy, after he was shot).

“Please assure me that you are all Republicans!” (to his doctors after being shot).

“Read my lips…no new taxes!”

“A line has been drawn in the sand.” (about Iraq)

“I will never apologize for the United States- I don’t care

what the facts are…I’m not a ‘apologize for America’ kind

of guy.”

“When America is stronger, the world is safer”

“He’s Gerald Ford without the pizzazz.” –Pat Paulsen

“The Comeback Kid”

“It’s the economy, stupid!” –James Carville

“The light may be fading on the 20th century, but the sun is still rising on America.”

“We’re not running against the Comeback Kids…we’re running against the Karaoke Kids…they’d sing any tune to get elected.”

--George H.W. Bush

“Today, our nation saw evil- the very worst of human nature- and we responded with the best of America.”

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

“Our war on terror begins with al-Quaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”

(On change) “In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned… Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work or remaking America.”

“The non-violent practice of love preached by Gandhi & King… should be the North Start that guides us on our journey.” (speech after receiving Nobel Peace Prize in 2009)