SELF-KNOWLEDGE
“If I were to go over my life again, I would be a shoemaker.”
—JOHN ADAMS
“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
“I am a man of reserved, cold, austere and forbidding manners; my political adversaries say, a gloomy misanthropist, and my personal enemies, an unsocial savage.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“My whole life has been a succession of disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success in anything that I ever undertook.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“I never was and never shall be what is commonly termed a popular man, being as little qualified by nature, education, or habit for the arts of a courtier, as I am desirous of being courted by others.… I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment, and in my public station I never made myself inaccessible to any human being. But I have no powers of fascination; none of the honey which the profligate proverb says is the true fly-catcher.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“Do they think that I am such a damned fool as to think myself fit for President of the United States? No, sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way; but I am not fit to be President.”
—ANDREW JACKSON
“For twenty years [my horse] bore me around the circuit of my practice, and in all that time he never made a blunder. Would that his master could say the same!”
—JOHN TYLER
“[T]hough I occupy a very high position, I am the hardest working man in this country.”
—JAMES K. POLK
“[My life] affords me nothing sufficiently interesting to trouble my friends by communicating with them on the subject.”
—ZACHARY TAYLOR
“The idea that I should become President seems to me too visionary to require a serious answer. It has never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any other person.”
—ZACHARY TAYLOR
“I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“Notwithstanding a mendacious press; notwithstanding a subsidized gang of hirelings who have not ceased to traduce me, I have discharged all my official duties and fulfilled my pledges. And I say here tonight that if my predecessor had lived, the vials of wrath would have poured out upon him.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“I never liked service in the army. I did not wish to go to West Point.… I did not want to be made lieutenant-general. I did not want the presidency, and have never quite forgiven myself for resigning the command of the army to accept it.”
—ULYSSES S. GRANT
“I am honest and sincere in my desire to do well, but the question is whether I know enough to accomplish what I desire.”
—GROVER CLEVELAND
“I do the same thing every day. I eat three meals, sleep six hours and read dusty old books the rest of the time. My life is about as devoid of anything funny as the great desert is of grass.”
—BENJAMIN HARRISON
“I want to avoid everything that is personal and I want it understood that I am grandson of nobody.”
—BENJAMIN HARRISON
“I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action.”
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“Any party which would nominate me would make a great mistake.”
—WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
“I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am President the less of a party man I seem to become.”
—WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
“My constant embarrassment is to restrain the emotions that are inside of me. You may not believe it, but I sometimes feel like the fire from a far from extinct volcano, and if the lava does not seem to spill over it is because you are not high enough to see into the basin and see the caldron boil.”
—WOODROW WILSON
“The only thing I really worry about is that I am sometimes very much afraid I am going to be nominated and elected. That’s an awful thing to contemplate.”
—WARREN G. HARDING
“I am a man of limited talents from a small town; I don’t seem to grasp that I am President.”
—WARREN G. HARDING
“Forget that I’m President of the United States. I’m Warren Harding, playing poker with friends, and I’m going to beat the hell out of them.”
—WARREN G. HARDING
“I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my goddamn friends. They’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.”
—WARREN G. HARDING
“I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”
—WARREN G. HARDING
—CALVIN COOLIDGE, upon waking up from a nap
“Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
“I am as much interested in human beings as one could possibly be, but it is desperately hard for me to show it.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
“I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can’t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.”
—CALVIN COOLIDGE
“I am a juggler and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does.”
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“I can think of nothing more boring, for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half an hour looking at my face on their television screens.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
“You know, once in a while I get to the point, with everybody staring at me, where I want to go back indoors and pull down the curtains.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
“I don’t believe I’ll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn’t go to Harvard.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
“I’m a powerful SOB, you know that?”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
“I wake up at 5 A.M. some mornings and hear the planes coming in at National Airport and I think they are bombing me.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
“I would have made a good Pope.”
—RICHARD NIXON
“It doesn’t come natural to me to be a buddy-buddy boy.… I can’t really let my hair down with anyone. No, not really with anyone, not even with my own family.”
—RICHARD NIXON
“If ever the time comes when the Republican Party and the others are looking for an outwardly warm, easygoing gregarious type, then they will not want the sort of man I am.”
—RICHARD NIXON
“Even when I’m tired, I do not talk about nonsensical things.”
—RICHARD NIXON
“I hope that history will present me with maybe two words. One is peace. The other is human rights.”
—JIMMY CARTER
“You’d be surprised how much being a good actor pays off.”
—RONALD REAGAN
“I’m not smart enough to lie.”
—RONALD REAGAN
“I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“I’m not what you call your basic intellectual.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“I kind of think I’m a scintillating kind of fellow.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“Some reporters said I don’t have any vision. I don’t see that.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“I’m someone who has a deep emotional attachment to ‘Starsky and Hutch.’”
—BILL CLINTON
“I may not have been the greatest President, but I’ve had the most fun eight years.”
—BILL CLINTON
“I’m basically a media creation. I’ve never really done anything. I’ve worked for my dad. I worked in the oil industry. But that’s not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH