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21 " The most dangerous job is to be a president - That's nothing more than a fact! "
― Deyth Banger
22 " As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them. "
― Jon Stewart , America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
23 " While you and I are allowed the luxury of our pain, president isn't. A president must take into account how his citizens feel and he must manage them and lead them, but he must not succumb to personal feelings. His job is to maintain a ruthless sense of proportion while keeping the coldness of his calculation to himself. "
― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like
24 " Eisenhower has been much criticized for his failure publicly to endorse the Court's decision. But he felt that doing so would set an undesirable precedent. If a president endorsed decisions he agreed with, might he feel compelled to oppose decisions he did not agree with? And what would that do to the rule of law? " The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold ... the constitutional processes.... I will obey." 3 "
25 " I also believe that man’s continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people.... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment—unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight—that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues. "
― Garth Stein , The Art of Racing in the Rain
26 " I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's " Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's " Five Feet High and Rising," and " You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes. "
27 " 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
28 " There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress and that is continuously incessantly and without interruption. If it's really going to work the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous. "
29 " They pick a president and then for four years they pick on him. "
30 " They pick a President and then for four years they pick on him. "
31 " Within the first few months I discovered that being a president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed. "
32 " I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a president and I think I'll go along with them. "
33 " The story of FDR as U.S. Commander in Chief is a heroic war story of a president who had already overcome great adversity in facing polio but who went on to take the reins of our armed forces in the greatest conflagration in human history - on our behalf. "
34 " My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States. "
35 " I'm a child of the sixties. I grew up with a president who was a crook, who put us into the most unpopular war in history, who had no communication with people under thirty. I had seen the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Panthers and the Diggers; I understood what they were about. "
36 " We need a president with tremendous intelligence, smarts, cunning, strength and stamina. "
37 " Ronald Reagan was a president of strength. His philosophy was a philosophy of strength - a strong military, a strong economy and strong families. "
38 " Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying. "
― Ronald Reagan
39 " Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear? "
40 " We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities. "
