If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

I kept a very full diary of my relationship with Nixon, for some strange reason, until he became president.

I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America. But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.

I want a president with a record of public service: someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase form and fortune for ourselves; we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.

Oh, I can keep many secrets, so I would be a phenomenal secret agent. I love secrets.

The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

There’s always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There’s an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

I’m the only president you’ve got.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values and your vision and the life experiences that make you who you are.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.

I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

We don’t have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures – and I quote – ‚hit the bottom‘ so the market could – I quote – ‚run its course.‘

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

It wasn’t until we got our first office in Palo Alto where things became more like a company. We never went into this wanting to build a company.

I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters – and the church does not speak for me.

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

A man who has no office to go, to I don’t care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.

I don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing ‚Happy Birthday,‘ like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, ‚Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!‘

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him when I arrive.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

I think it is important for Europe to understand that even though I am president and George Bush is not president, Al Qaeda is still a threat.