"The major problem- one of the major problems, for there are several- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of whom manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
— Barack Obama

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."
— Barack Obama

"So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a
relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel!"
— Eddie Izzard

"from Bill Clinton speech-
"People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power...""
— Bill Clinton

"I am a war president."
— George W. Bush

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
— Clarence Darrow

"To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too."
— Barack Obama

""I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
(Washington DC, 12 May, 2008)"
— George W. Bush

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

"
— Abraham Lincoln

"The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."
— Barack Obama

"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 B. Johnson

""Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."

(Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September, 2004) "
— George W. Bush

"White men have screwed this country up! I would like a black, female…. everything all rolled into one.I want something different. I want a real change. People, I want a president who speaks well, who has a sense of humor. This guy is such a moron! It's beyond the point where it's a joke. He's an idiot."
— Denis Leary

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."
— Barack Obama

"We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist. "
— Barack Obama

"In America, anybody can be president.
That's one of the risks you take."
— Adlai Stevenson

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
— President Obama

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."
— George W. Bush

""I love it--I just love it.""
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

""It will take time to restore chaos""
— George W. Bush

"I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. ...

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. "
— Nick Hornby (The Polysyllabic Spree)

"It was when I was in a police cell at the C.I.D. (Central Intelligence Division) headquarters in Lagos; the cell I was in named "The Kalakuta Republic" by the prisoners. I found out when I went to East Africa that "Kalakuta" is a Swahili word that means "rascal." So if rascality is going to get us what we want, we will use it; because we are dealing with corrupt people, we have to be rascally with them."
— Fela Anikulapo Kuti

"I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties."
— Ronald Reagan (Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches)

"We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Yes we can`t! "
— Alfred E. Neuman

"If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come
'Lincolnesque' just means tall?"
— Calvin Trillin (Enough's Enough)

"And so it is to the printing press--to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news--that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent."
— John F. Kennedy

"...the words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms..."
— Barack Obama (The Inaugural Address, 2009: Together with Abraham Lincoln's First and Second Inaugural Addresses and The Gettysburg Address and Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance)

""But Here This America, We Will Meet Them!""
— Barack Obama

"I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk. "
— William Howard Taft