Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

The Iraq war can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically, and the president needs to come to that realization.

We have bad things happen, but it's not like Syria, which we ignore and pretend doesn't happen. We've got it pretty good, no matter who the president is, to be honest.

We did drive them [Iran] to the negotiating table. And my successor, John Kerry, and President [Barack] Obama got a deal that put a lid on Iran's nuclear program without firing a single shot. That's diplomacy. That's coalition-building. That's working with other nations.

Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity; having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character.

Sometimes Hillary Clinton doesn't get the credit she deserves. But the fact is, Hillary is steady, and Hillary is true.

The president Donald Trump has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. He also recently has not demonstrated that he understands the character of his nation.

I'm going to keep talking about what I would do as president, the experience that I bring, the temperament and judgment that led President [Barack] Obama to ask me to be secretary of state after we ran a really hard primary against each other. It's funny to me, because when I have a position, whether it's first lady, or senator, or secretary of state, and I'm doing the work, I'm really quite popular.

We hope that diplomacy works before you ever use force. The hardest decision a president makes is ever to use force.

Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...'

Today, former President Bill Clinton met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il and convinced him to release two American journalists that have been jailed since March. Isn't that great? This is big, yeah. Or as Clinton calls it, another Asian happy ending.

A leader’s most powerful ally is his or her own example.

So Americans do want their presidents, by and large, you want them to be people who get things done and have experience. That's going to be Trump's big disadvantage going into this election, because people are going to be looking back and saying, we've got the guy without the experience who said the things that sounded good. And guess what? That hasn't worked out for us too well.

Russia remains an adversary to the United States. We have some overlapping interests. It would be better if our relationship was better. But our relationship is not good right now because of Vladimir Putin. There are steps that I think that we should be taking that we should have taken under the Obama administration. For instance, providing defensive weaponry to Ukraine. I encourage the President and the administration to take a look at those steps.

The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.

I admire and respect Bill Clinton. I think he was a great president.

Let's give the president some due here. They had a mess, and he fixed it, and they mobilized a lot of authority, and they did it.

My last visit to China as secretary, January of 2011, I told President Hu Jintao, just like this, "President of the United States wanted me to tell you that we now consider North Korea a direct threat to the United States." And it had no effect whatsoever.

National security, the government is in charge of that. And you better have a president that understands the threats we [the state] face and what we have to do about it and if you can't articulate that as a candidate, you cannot be commander-in-chief.

The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?

I didn't deserve to be president just based on the Richter scale of 'Was I tough enough and did I understand the process?'

We are ready to cooperate in any way to achieve stability in Syria, of course taking into consideration the interest of the country, and the will of the Syrian people.

Governor Pence said, inarguably, Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama.

The original thing that fascinated me most was why we expect leaders, and especially presidents, at times to destroy themselves - and that's a sign of being a good leader or a good president. We usually don't expect that of almost anyone else in any profession, in particular, in public life.

This is one where you can just kind of go to the tape on it. But Governor [Mike] Pence said inarguably Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President [Barack] Obama.

I respect the fact that Donald Trump always listens. It's how he was in business. It's how he is as president.