Who you are, what you are, does not change after you occupy the oval office. All it does is magnify who you are. All it does is shine a spotlight on who you are.
Politics comes and goes, but your principles don't. And everybody wants to be loved -- not everybody. ... You never heard anybody say, 'I want to be despised, I'm running for office.'
Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.
Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first...The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for power or office. I have had an ample share of both. If I stay it is because I have a feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence about what I care about above all else, the building of a sure and lasting peace.
... No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.
A President has a great chance; his position is almost that of a king and a prime minister rolled into one. Once he has left office he cannot do very much; and he is a fool if he fails to realize it all and to be profoundly thankful for having had the great chance.
A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.
It seems only reasonable that the people have a right to know virtually everything about the personality they are buying each time they put their money through the box office
The American story has never been about things coming easy. It has been about rising to the moment when the moment is hard. About rejecting panicked division for purposeful unity. About seeing a mountaintop from the deepest valley. That is why we remember that some of the most famous words ever spoken by an American came from a president who took office in a time of turmoil: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.