“When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.”

To sustain an environment suitable for man, we must fight on a thousand battlegrounds. Despite all of our wealth and knowledge, we cannot create a redwood forest, a wild river, or a gleaming seashore.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

The job, of course, will never be finished. For a nation, as for an individual, education is a perpetually unfinished journey, a continuing process of discovery.

In a thousand unseen ways we have drawn shape and strength from the land.

Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement.

A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be.

Heck by the time a man scratches his behind, clears his throat, and tells me how smart he is, we’ve already wasted fifteen minutes.

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.

I am proud to be a member of a party that opens its doors to all men–and closes its hearts to none.

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

Any man who’s not willing to take half a loaf in a negotiation, well, that man never went to bed hungry.

John ain’t been worth a damn since he started wearing $300 suits.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. He’s a nice fellow, but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.

The Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.