“I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.”

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

To this day George Sr. is the soft touch and I’m the enforcer. I’m the one who writes them a letter and says ‘Shape up!’ He writes, ‘You’re marvelous.’

Describing life out of the public eye to David Letterman, December 6th, 1996 It’s been different. I started driving again. I started cooking again. My driving’s better than my cooking. George has discovered Sam’s Club.

Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, ‘We would like to publish your book.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t have a book,’ and they said well it’s a well known fact that you have kept diaries.

Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.

The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, out of platforms and conventions.

I really loved living in the White House, but I don’t miss it at all.

I’m a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.

I think the country has had enough Bushes.

I want to still be able to garden while I can bend over.

But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

The home is the child’s first school, the parent is the child’s first teacher, and reading is the child’s first subject.

There are a lot of ways to serve, and being president is not the only one, and I would hope that someone else would run.

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.

I really feel very strongly that the person who runs for office is the courageous one, and the one who everybody has to know.

Raising five boys is a handful, trust me.

I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it’s totally not, which is why I’m trying to get away from it because it’s just easy and automatic.

It’s not controversial to say that human activity is contributing in some way. The question is how serious that is.

Some of the record company people, they wouldn’t let me put this out, … They said it would be too controversial. But this picture is saying ‘Look, they can stand together. Don’t have to be no fight.’

I admire Madonna because she always did whatever she felt like doing. She went through some controversial periods when people rejected her, but she kept on reinventing herself.

As soon as something like Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.

I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.

I like an interesting movie even if it’s controversial or offensive, depending on your taste.

Many times I heard Imam Ahmad saying (when asked to give his opinion) on controversial scholarly issues ‘I do not know.’