“If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; and it is best not to worry about either.”
—JAMES GARFIELD
“He must have been crazy. None but an insane person could have done such a thing.”
—JAMES GARFIELD, on his assassin, Charles Guiteau
“If we bar out the irresponsible crank, so far as I can see the President is in no peril, except that he may be killed by the superabundant kindness of the people.”
—BENJAMIN HARRISON
“Friends… I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“Any well-dressed man who is willing to die himself can kill the President of the United States.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
“A president has to expect those things.”
—HARRY TRUMAN, after two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate him in 1950