Quotes Of Note From Every US President

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” –John Adams

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. ” — John Adams

“Let justice be done though the heavens should fall”. — John Adams

“Patience and Perserverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” — John Quincy Adams

“The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality”. — John Quincy Adams

“Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken.” — Chester Arthur

“The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.” — James Buchanan

“Read my lips: no new taxes.” — A pledge George Bush made and broke that probably cost him a second term.

“I can you hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” — George W. Bush standing in the rubble of the WTC

“Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” — George W. Bush

“States like these (Iraq, Iran, & North Korea), and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.” — George W. Bush

“We’ve uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.” — Jimmy Carter

“A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.” — Grover Cleveland

“A man is known by the company he keeps, and also by the company from which he is kept out.” — Grover Cleveland

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.” — Grover Cleveland

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” — Bill Clinton in his Grand Jury testimony

“[W]hen I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale.” — Bill Clinton

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” — Bill Clinton on Monica Lewinsky

“The chief business of the American people is business.” — Calvin Coolidge

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” — Dwight Eisenhower

“Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the “falling domino” principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” — Dwight Eisenhower on the “Domino Theory”

“It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.” — Millard Fillmore

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” — Gerald Ford said this after Nixon resigned and he was sworn in as President

“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.” — James Garfield

“I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.” — Ulysses S. Grant

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my godd*mned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!” — Warren G. Harding

“We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.” — Benjamin Harrison

“The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital… if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today.” — William Henry Harrison

“Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.” — Rutherford B. Hayes

“Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.” — Herbert Hoover

“Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.” — Andrew Jackson

“One man with courage makes a majority.” — Andrew Jackson

“To the victors belong the spoils.” — Andrew Jackson

“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”. — Thomas Jefferson

“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves”. — Thomas Jefferson

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” — Thomas Jefferson denouncing slavery

“Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State”. — Thomas Jefferson

“Honest conviction is my courage; the Constitution is my guide”. — Andrew Johnson

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read “President Can’t Swim.” — Lyndon Johnson

“And so, my fellow americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” — John F. Kennedy

“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” — John F. Kennedy

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” — John F. Kennedy

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” — Abe Lincoln

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!” — Abe Lincoln

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.” — Abe Lincoln

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.” — Abe Lincoln

“(W)e here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” — Abe Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” — Abe Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address

“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.” — Abe Lincoln

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison

“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” — James Madison

“That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example – and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.” — William McKinley

“The American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” — James Monroe introduces what came to be known as the Monroe doctrine

“I am not a crook…” — Richard Nixon

“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” — Richard Nixon

“The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.” — Richard Nixon

“It is time for the great silent majority of Americans to stand up and be counted.” — Richard Nixon

“(F)requently the more trifling the subject the more animated and protracted the discussion.” — Franklin Pierce

“Public opinion: May it always perform one of its appropriate offices, by teaching the public functionaries of the State and of the Federal Government, that neither shall assume the exercise of powers entrusted by the Constitution to the other.” — James Knox Polk

“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.” — Ronald Reagan said this during a radio microphone test, 1984

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” — Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” — Ronald Reagan during a speech about the Challenger disaster

“I hope you’re all Republicans.” — Ronald Reagan to surgeons as he entered the operating room following his assassination attempt

“…I urge you to beware the temptation of pride – the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” — Ronald Reagan refers to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”.

“The only thing to fear is fear itself.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

“When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.” — William Howard Taft

“It would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe”. — Zachary Taylor

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” — Harry Truman

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

“Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette – the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” — John Tyler

“It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn’t.” — Martin Van Buren

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” — George Washington

“To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” — George Washington

“I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.” — Woodrow Wilson

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.” — Woodrow Wilson

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson

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