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Quotes by President
"The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period."
5
"My liberty depends on you being free, too."
5
"I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic."
5
"This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
5
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
5
"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us."
5
"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
5
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
5
"Everything changes but change itself."
5
"Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them."
5
"Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor."
5
"Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls 'the mad pride of intellectuality,' taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books."
5
"If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."
5
"Now, anybody who thinks that we can move this economy forward with just a few folks at the top doing well, hoping that it's going to trickle down to working people who are running faster and faster just to keep up, you'll never see it."
5
"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it."
5
"The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion."
4
"A republican government is slow to move yet when once in motion its momentum becomes irresistible."
4
"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives."
4
"An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry."
4
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."
4
"Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known."
4
"Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes."
4
"I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man."
4
"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
4
"Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours."
4
"Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible."
4
"I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."
4
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