Bully Pulpit Quotes

I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism.

The bully pulpit is not an open microphone. You have to target it very carefully.

People pay attention to what a President says, whether or not he pauses for emphasis in the right places. Sometimes they even read the text.

Stop sending out press releases and start passing some bills...

Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can’t govern 300 million people—or 180 million when Kennedy was president—by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric.

It's healthy for government to be a kind of moral catalyst, using the bully pulpit of high office.

No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand.

I grieve, however, that anyone could be stupid enough, in any part of our country, to arrest the Vice-Presidential candidate of a recognized party because, on his way to speak to citizens of the United States, he tried to go through a door which was marked as the entrance for people of color. It seems to me completely incredible that, in a State where colored people are allowed to enlist and go to war and be killed for their country, there should exist anything so senseless as a rule which forces human beings to enter through separate doors according to their color. It is fundamentally un-Christian and wrong.

Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again, much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction, the movement has been in a funk.

A traditional corporate executive may have power within the company, but a woke CEO can use the corporate bully pulpit to exert influence over society.

I know the problem of obesity. I got to tell you, I think that's tepid. I just don't think the bully pulpit is going to be enough to sufficiently fight obesity. We're going to have to have incentives in here.

You can't stand for too many things. You can't use the bully pulpit for too many things. So, I promise you, every day, I am going to talk about jobs, spending, and education.

Mainly people—they’re just misinformed, or they are too busy, they’re trying to get their kids to school, they’re working, they just don’t have enough information, or they’re not professionals at sorting out all the information that’s out there, and so our political process gets skewed. But if you guys give them good information, their instincts are good and they will make good decisions. And the president has the bully pulpit to give them good information.

But here's the bottom line, the president of the United States, he controls the bully pulpit, he can talk about anything he wants to talk about.

My duty is to raise the consciousness of the American people.

Are we diminishing the bully pulpit to a pulpit of bull?

This is a classic case of using the “bully pulpit.” We got the public to think about the issue. And more of them came to the same basic conclusion I had—that this is about fairness.

It was easy for Sanford to have a bully pulpit as governor. It's another thing to be in the trenches, having to face leadership, and say, 'No, that's not a conservative position, that's not what we're doing.'

The truth is that the gossip-hounds in Tinsel Town and the cackling windbags at 'The View' don't want civility. They want catty (or dare I say it gay-ish) gossip and sensational headlines that provide them with an opportunity to hop on the bully pulpit.

I appreciate the power of a White House bully pulpit - but kids listen and learn primarily from other kids. If your son's friend tells him that the apple is better than the fries, he's more likely to listen.

I do not intend to use the Surgeon General's Office as a bully pulpit for gun control.

I never met a microphone I didn’t like, and I plan to use this agency as a bully pulpit.

Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and Ive got such a bully pulpit!

It's remarkable to watch the president, with all the weight of his ability to command rhetoric with the bully pulpit behind him, make a clear speech about climate change and why that's so important for us all to focus on. And that is a rather remarkable thing to see. It's enormously powerful.

Entertainment was transportation. You were supposed to take somebody out of their seat and bring them back in. You’re not supposed to impose your values or your supposed knowledge to manipulate or control people. That was not your job. You were not supposed to use the bully pulpit of Hollywood to pound people with ideas. You’re there to entertain.