Top 1200 Great Presidents Quotes & Sayings

Over the years, increasing partisanship has led many members of Congress reflexively to speak in favor of any military action launched by presidents of their own party while withholding support to presidents of the opposing party.

Great presidents don't just fight good fights - they win them.

I do not believe that the children of presidents or vice-presidents should be assigned to combat zones. They have no place there.

Our great presidents have been stewards, men who broadly identified with the whole of America.

It's a horrible economy but I'm trying to do my part. I just bought a new shower curtain it has all the presidents on it. Do you know how hard it is to masturbate with all the presidents staring at you? And when the water hits them it looks like they're crying.

Stupid presidents, smart presidents, white presidents, black presidents - doesn't work! What this country needs is a crazy Third World dictator. And Donald Trump has what it takes to be that. He's already got a plane with his name on it, solid gold buildings, a harem...

Presidents should do whatever possible and practical to encourage an environment of cooperation and bipartisanship. And they should maintain a certain level of decorum, diplomacy and decency. But, at the end of the day, presidents get elected to enact change.

When things don't go well they like to blame presidents; and that's something that presidents are paid for.

Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, presidents have understood that the Supreme Court cannot make a law. They cannot make it. The legislature has to make it, the executive branch has to sign it and enforce it.

Presidents are afraid to lose wars. They're afraid to be outflanked on the right by the militarists. They don't want to be seen as soft on either communism or soft on terrorism or whatever. So presidents are constantly tugged away from their domestic commitments to foreign policy.

FDR, JFK, LBJ [all Democratic presidents ] we have a pretty long list of presidents who maybe were not entirely forthcoming with intelligence information before they went to war, so I'd be cautious against making legal cases against the administration.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced adversities that, in their times, seemed impregnable. Great presidents overcome great odds.

I have known several presidents quite well, including my husband, and I worked closely with President George W. Bush and the White House then after 9/11, and I served with President Obama. I disagree with all three of those presidents on certain things.

There's a long history of presidents coming in, saying they're gonna to take on the bureaucracy. What they really mean is they're gonna try to shift the emphasis of where those bureaucrats are gonna work and how they're gonna spend their time towards achieving objectives that presidents want to achieve.

What if Barack Obama established a Presidential Advisory Committee that would meet once every couple of months, bringing together the former presidents for a conference in order to seek their collective wisdom? There is a wealth of experience in former presidents that generally goes untapped.

I think all presidents should have teenage girls before they become presidents. If you can handle those hormones, you can handle anything.

Look, I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, all of them, and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel, you know? I can't remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.

I believe that Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our nation's great Presidents, and Senator Clinton as one of our nation's great public servants.

There will be great presidents again but there will never be another Camelot.

If our presidents, or potential presidents, don't know this or don't articulate [an America ideal], that's a blown opportunity. The president can teach as well as lead.

We have had good and bad Presidents, and it is a consoling reflection that the American Nation possesses such elements of prosperity that the bad Presidents cannot destroy it, and have been able to do no more than slightly to retard the public's advancement.

Donald Trump is horrendous, but he is also honest. Both Presidents [Bill] Clinton and [Barak] Obama were great speakers, but unrepentant mass murderers.

Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.'

I don't pick my presidents because they were great presidents. I'm not much interested in ranking presidents and who is the best and who is the worst. I am much more inclined to be interested in them if they had an interesting life and if they were a complete person - and by that I mean they also had flaws and failings.

All presidents - particularly war presidents, presidents inclined to the imperial presidency - invoke Abraham Lincoln as a justification, but they omit these three defenses of Lincoln's strong actions. Suspend habeas, blockade, increase army without congress, arrest Maryland legislators, etc.

Some of the presidents were great and some of them weren't. I can say that, because I wasn't one of the great presidents, but I had a good time trying to be one, I can tell you that.

But no matter how many times we re-rank the presidents, in another 200 years, the top presidents will still be Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson, because they defined what a president is. They are the idea, and you can't be better than the idea.

The great presidents are people who watch out for others.

Nowadays even presidents, vice-presidents, and heads of big agencies are opening their minds to accept psychic phenomena, because they know it works.

Republican presidents talk about freedom. Democratic presidents talk about equality.

Throughout American history our presidents have invoked our nation's founding fathers. This is particularly true of recent presidents.

I think that the great presidents have always been a little more clever.

Throughout our history, the Supreme Court has entered national crises, often preventing presidents from doing what they want to do. Indeed, sometimes the court's verdicts are not vindicated by history. And yet presidents have complied with those rulings.

Let's assume for the moment that the logic behind Presidents Day is actually sound for certain presidents. Why not have a separate holiday for Lincoln and one for Washington - as we used to do, before we became so concerned with the 'Every President Gets a Trophy' ethos?

There are a lot of women that I think are very powerful and would be great presidents.

I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all, if he gets up at night to go the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue.

In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process.

What do you do when you get out of the military, you stop serving? There are 26 presidents who served in the military. More than half of our presidents... that means that you stop being an American?

If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition, and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives—personal and patriotic—to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time they all compete for history’s blessing.

I've had presidents in my lifetime - and I'm old enough to have seen several - that I really detested, but they're still my president. I've had presidents that I've really liked.

I think that presidents don't give up power that has accrued to them by the precedent of previous presidents. Even when they say they would like to, I think once they get there they don't give it up.

The needlework of lies and rumors seeks to distract peoples attention from the daily business of governance under the Presidents leadership. Those who continually plot for the Presidents downfall will never succeed because she is a hard-working President with no other agenda than to promote our peoples welfare

There have been many Presidents of the United States and the roll will be indefinitely extended. We have had a number of brilliant soldiers, but only one great general.

The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand.

No one reaches the Oval Office without a great deal of admiration for the institution - and himself - so it's unsurprising that sitting presidents favor the biographies of former presidents.

What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!

In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain.

I learned to be far more skeptical of what I'm told by presidents, no matter who the presidents are, and also to be much more cautious, always, in any action or vote that could lead to the use of American military power and most particularly what we call 'boots on the ground.'

By the time that book So You Want to Be President? came along, we had already had enough presidents that had shown us that presidents are human beings. So I felt I was contributing to the common knowledge there, but not revealing anything really new - sort of supporting what everybody already was suspicious of.

In fact, presidents and vice presidents are automatically audited by the IRS, which hasn't stopped other chief executives from making them public.

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.

I've done it 30 years. I don't know what there is to gain by doing it 40. But I think there is something about doing it over that length of time that says something. That's seven U.S. presidents and five presidents of McDonald's.

Great presidents, and even those not so great, never complained about the hands they were dealt. Just the opposite. They assumed they were in the big chair to meet big challenges, no matter how difficult.

Yesterday all five living presidents gathered for the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library in Dallas. Well, six living presidents if you count Hillary in 2016.

Slowly but without question - and Presidents' Day is only one example - Americans are forgetting and ignoring the men and events that have made this nation great.

What if we had a culture that prevented these presidents from being courageous? And I worry now that we have a system that makes it very hard to choose people who would make the same courage choice as our great presidents. And I guess what I would say is, in this next campaign, take a look at the people who are running. If they don't remind you of the great presidents, do not vote for them.

Well, I've worked with Republican presidents, obviously, and Democratic presidents since I've had the privilege to remain as mayor.

We've gotten to do so many great things throughout the years. We've gotten to meet presidents. We've been able to go to so many wonderful awards shows and meet so many great celebrities.

Bad presidents make for great music, and I'm gonna do my best to provide it.

If members of Congress were to vote to allow a military action, they might then share the blame if the mission were to go wrong. So they demand in the abstract that presidents ask their approval for going to war but in practice prefer to let presidents bear the burden alone.