Presidents' Day Quotes

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

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

The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
James Monroe

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
John Quincy Adams

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.
Andrew Jackson

The connection which formerly existed between the Government and banks was in reality injurious to both, as well as to the general interests of the community at large.
Martin Van Buren

All the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
William Henry Harrison

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

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.
James K. Polk

The power given by the Constitution to the Executive to interpose his veto is a high conservative power; but in my opinion it should never be exercised except in cases of clear violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of due consideration by Congress.
Zachary Taylor

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
Millard Fillmore

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.
Franklin Pierce

The distribution of patronage of the Government is by far the most disagreeable duty of the President.
James Buchanan

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.
Abraham Lincoln

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.
Andrew Johnson

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.
Ulysses S. Grant

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.
Rutherford B. Hayes

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.
James A. Garfield

I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damned business.
Chester A. Arthur

He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.
Grover Cleveland

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
Benjamin Harrison

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.
William McKinley

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt

Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents - but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.
William Howard Taft

A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
Woodrow Wilson

I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it.
Warren G. Harding

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
Calvin Coolidge

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.
Harry S. Truman

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.
John F. Kennedy

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.
Richard M. Nixon

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald R. Ford

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.
Jimmy Carter

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Ronald Reagan

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.
George H. W. Bush

I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I have changed government policy solely because of a contribution.
William J. Clinton

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
George W. Bush

And we can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot.But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans.
Barack Obama