Quotes on Presidents

Generals aren't in the business of commenting on the correctness or incorrectness of the President's decisions. Anybody who thinks he should be able to do that ought to be fired on the spot.

Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man.

Surgeon generals are appointed by presidents, but our work isn't about politics. Our highest duty to to the public. Our true guide is science. Our job is to speak the truth about public health, even when it's controversial or perceived as political.

Although the attorney general is a part of the president's team, you're really separate and apart. You have a special responsibility as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. There has to be a distance that you keep - between this department and the White House.

Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust.

I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more.

Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup, whatever it may be, is maybe the most fun couple weeks we have a year, but I love being able to control my own destiny. The work that I am able to put in ahead of time was either going to come out and I was going to be successful with it, or I was going to try and fail and learn how to succeed the next time.

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

Our priests and presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our educators and newscasters need worry less about satisfying the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship.

Presidents are evaluated not by what they did by the stroke of their own pen; it's what they persuade Congress to do.

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.

Systems, coaches, and directors or club presidents do not win games - players do, they are the only people who can make a significant difference once that game starts.

When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully.

Every country has a founding mythology. For Americans, it starts with our first president's youthful encounter with a cherry tree and refusal to tell a lie. Mr. Trump would do well to find inspiration in that story, which goes to the heart of what makes America different - and our foreign policy effective - around the world.

I have the highest respect for Obama. I have worked with 10 American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. As far as Israeli security is concerned, he has done the most that an American president can do.

We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing 'Happy Birthday,' like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!'

The presidents and the founding fathers and all of the people we sort of raise up as false idols, we don't wrestle with the fact that many of these were brilliant men, but they were also men with deep prejudices against people of color, against indigenous people, against women.

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.'