OTHER HISTORICAL FIGURES
BENEDICT ARNOLD
“He seems to have been so hackneyed in villainy, and so lost to all sense of honor and shame that while his facilities will enable him to continue his sordid pursuits there will be no time for remorse.”
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
“Have you heard of Susan B. Anthony? I am shocked that you’ve heard of her.”
—DONALD TRUMP, to the Telegraph
JOE BIDEN
“He is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.”
—DONALD TRUMP
HUGO BLACK
(SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)
“I’ve felt from the beginning of all this Klan talk… that perhaps he did belong to the Klan—but that did not necessarily mean that he might not make a very great Judge on the Supreme Court.”
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, on Black’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan
“[A] cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
JAMES BOND
(FICTIONAL CHARACTER)
“James Bond is a man of honor, a symbol of real value to the free world.”
—RONALD REAGAN
LEONID BREZHNEV
(SOVIET PREMIER)
“I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin, you never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.”
—RICHARD NIXON
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
“A kindly man and well-meaning in a weak kind of way.”
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“[H]e uses too big a words.”
—RONALD REAGAN
AARON BURR
“I never thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun… whose aim or shot you could never be sure of.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
FU’AD BUTROS
(FOREIGN MINISTER OF LEBANON)
“You know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.”
—RONALD REAGAN
FIDEL CASTRO
“Castro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.”
—RICHARD NIXON
WINSTON CHURCHILL
“It is fun to be in the same decade with you.”
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
(SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)
“It isn’t so much that he’s a bad man. It’s just that he’s such a dumb son of a bitch.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
HENRY CLAY
“He is, like almost all the eminent men of this country, only half educated.… His morals, public and private, are loose.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“He is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of God, nothing too mean or low for him to condescend to.”
—ANDREW JACKSON
“I didn’t shoot Henry Clay and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.”
—ANDREW JACKSON, on things he had left undone
HILLARY CLINTON
“Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time.”
—DONALD TRUMP
(GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK)
“[A] mean son of a bitch who acts like a Mafioso.”
—BILL CLINTON
CARL CURTIS
(US SENATOR)
“He can’t talk. He’s unprepossessing. And he’s generally shit.”
—JOHN F. KENNEDY
EVERETT DIRKSEN
(US SENATOR)
“The Wizard of Ooze.”
—JOHN F. KENNEDY
BOB DOLE
(US SENATOR, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE)
“A classic example of somebody who had no reason to run. You’re 73 years old, you’re already the third-most-powerful man in the country. So why? He seems to be drawn by some psychological compulsion.”
—BARACK OBAMA
“I know that damned Douglass; he’s just like any nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.”
—ANDREW JOHNSON
“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”
—DONALD TRUMP, in remarks to the press about Black History Month in 2017 (Douglass died in 1895)
MICHAEL DUKAKIS
(DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE)
“[T]hat little Greek motherfucker.”
—BILL CLINTON
CLINT EASTWOOD
(ACTOR, MAYOR OF CARMEL, CALIFORNIA)
“What makes him think a middle-aged actor, who’s played with a chimp, could have a future in politics?”
—RONALD REAGAN
(EVANGELICAL PREACHER)
BARRY GOLDWATER
(US SENATOR)
“He wants to repeal the present and veto the future.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
“The man dyes his hair.… What does that tell you about him?… He doesn’t know who he is.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH
BILLY GRAHAM
(EVANGELIST)
“[W]e’ve just got this one evangelist, this Billy Graham, and he’s gone off the beam.… I hadn’t ought to say this, but he’s one of those counterfeits I was telling you about. He claims he’s a friend of all the Presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was President. I just don’t go for people like that. All he’s interested in is getting his name in the paper.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
(DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE)
“Grant was not fit to be nominated, and Greeley is not fit to be elected.”
—JAMES GARFIELD
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
“[T]he bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.”
—JOHN ADAMS
JOHN HANCOCK
“A man without a head and without heart—the mere shadow of a man!”
—JOHN ADAMS
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
(SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)
“I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that.”
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
HUBERT HUMPHREY
“All that Hubert needs over there is a gal to answer the phone and a pencil with an eraser on it.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
SADDAM HUSSEIN
“If we get into an armed situation, he’s going to get his ass kicked.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“When I need a little advice about Saddam Hussein, I turn to country music.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
JESSE JACKSON
“[T]he hustler from Chicago.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
(US SENATOR)
“I felt dirty at the touch of the man.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
MEIR KAHANE
(ISRAELI NATIONALIST LEADER)
“I thought this guy was kind of dead.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH, upon spotting a banner that read “Kahane Lives”
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
“I just don’t like that boy, and I never will. He worked for old Joe McCarthy, you know, and when old Joe was tearing up the Constitution and the country, that boy couldn’t say enough for him.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“I almost wish he had become President so the country could finally see a flesh-and-blood Kennedy grappling with the daily work of the Presidency and all the inevitable disappointments, instead of their storybook image of great heroes who, because they were dead, could make anything anyone wanted happen.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON
(SUPREME LEADER OF NORTH KOREA)
“Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’”
—DONALD TRUMP
HUEY LONG
“He was a liar, and he was nothing but a damn demagogue. It didn’t surprise me when they shot him.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR
“He’d like to occupy a throne room surrounded by experts in flattery; while in a dungeon beneath, unknown to the world, would be a bunch of able slaves doing his work and producing the things that, to the public, would represent the brilliant accomplishments of his mind. He’s a fool, but worse, he is a puking baby.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
JOHN MARSHALL
“The state has long suffered from the want of any counterpart to the rancorous hatred which Marshall bears to his country and from the cunning and sophistry within which he is able to surround himself.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
“[His] inveteracy is profound, and his mind of that gloomy malignity which will never let him forego the opportunity of satiating it on a victim.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
JOHN MCCAIN
“He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH
JOSEPH MCCARTHY
“He was nothing but a damn coward, and he was afraid of me.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“I just won’t get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
ROBERT MCNAMARA
(SECRETARY OF DEFENSE)
“[T]hat man with the Sta-Comb hair.”
—LYNDON JOHNSON
“I’ll put mine up against his anytime.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH, after Mondale questioned his manhood
TIP O’NEILL
“He could be sincere and friendly when he wanted to be… but he could also turn off his charm and friendship like a light switch and become as bloodthirsty as a piranha.”
—RONALD REAGAN
THOMAS PAINE
“There can no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief.”
—JOHN ADAMS
“What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass, is Tom Paine’s Common Sense.”
—JOHN ADAMS
J. DANFORTH “DAN” QUAYLE
“That’s got every fire hydrant in America worried.”
—BILL CLINTON, after vice presidential candidate Quayle vowed to be a “pit bull” during the 1992 campaign
“Nancy Reagan runs Ronald Reagan. She’s a very strong woman, and, if you make her angry, you’re never going to pull this guy into camp.… Nancy Reagan’s a bitch, a demanding one, and he listens to her.”
—RICHARD NIXON
WILLIAM REHNQUIST
(SUPREME COURT JUSTICE)
“Who the hell is that clown? Is he Jewish? He looks it.”
—RICHARD NIXON
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
“She hated my father and she can’t stand it that his children turned out so much better than hers.”
—JOHN F. KENNEDY
ANASTASIO SOMOZA
(PRESIDENT OF NICARAGUA)
“He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
(CONFEDERATE VICE PRESIDENT)
“Never have I seen so small a nubbin come out of so much husk.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ADLAI STEVENSON
(DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE)
“Adlai Stevenson was a man who could never make up his mind whether he had to go to the bathroom or not.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
“The real trouble with Stevenson is that he’s no better than a regular sissy.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
CHARLES SUMNER
(US SENATOR)
“A narrow head… his eyes are so close together he can peek through a gimlet hole without blinking.”
—ULYSSES S. GRANT
“She’s the best man in England.”
—RONALD REAGAN
PIERRE TRUDEAU
(CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER)
“[T]hat asshole.”
—RICHARD NIXON
HENRY WALLACE
“He was a muddled, totally irrational man, almost incapable of uttering a coherent sentence. He was also the bitterest man I have ever encountered.”
—HARRY TRUMAN
EARL WARREN
“The biggest damfool mistake I ever made.”
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, on his appointment of Warren to the Supreme Court
“The gigantic intellect, the envious temper, the ravenous ambition, and the rotten heart of Daniel Webster.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
LAWRENCE WELK
(BANDLEADER AND IMPRESARIO)
“I’m all for Lawrence Welk. Lawrence Welk is a wonderful man. He used to be, or was, or—wherever he is now, bless him.”
—GEORGE H. W. BUSH
HAROLD WILSON
(BRITISH PRIME MINSTER)
“I won’t have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble in Parliament you run over here with your shirttail hanging out.”
—LYNDON B. JOHNSON