Since the US government was formed, we’ve had 43 presidents, some great, some awful, mostly middling. In those nearly 230 years, the government’s head honchos of state have delivered some pretty insightful, even prescient, speeches. In honor of the just-past President’s Day (lovingly celebrated locally by mattress sales and making kids go to school to make up a snow day), here are some of our favorite Presidential words of wisdom:
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.
— John F. Kennedy, 1961.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning terror.
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 4, 1933.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
— Abraham Lincoln, November, 1864, five months before his assassination.
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.
— Benjamin Harrison.
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
— Ronald Reagan.
It is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about [the President’s] acts, and this means it is as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
— Teddy Roosevelt, May, 1918.
The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.
— Jimmy Carter.
War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.
— William McKinley, March 4, 1897.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
— Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953.
The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
— George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli, 1796.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
— James Madison, 1788.
There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress … than I had any conception of, before I became President of the United States.
— Pineville’s own favorite son, James K. Polk, 1846.
To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought to hand down to them amplified and developed.
— Teddy Roosevelt, December 3, 1907.
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
— Harry S. Truman.
If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier — so long as I’m the dictator.
— George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000.
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2004.
