National Office Quotes

The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage. It takes them a long time to become acquainted with the Federal office-holders and the Federal Government.

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.

We have a sufficient political class, and the military doesn't have to get involved in high national office. The days of doing that, post-Civil War and post-World War II, are gone.

If you are going to run for national office, you'd better understand that optimism is something Americans expect.

Neil McElroy, the Secretary of Defense, had joined the Episcopalian Church. When a public figure joins the church at the age of fifty plus, it means one thing – he’s planning to run for President of the United States.

After nearly 15 minutes of soul searching, I have heard the call. Nation, I will seek the office of the president of the United States. I am doing it!

I don't have any presidential aspirations. If the millennials want me to do it, I'd do it, though.

I wanted to be president of the United States. I really did. The older I get, the less preposterous the idea seems.

The U. S. Presidency could be decided by a system Americans would find unacceptable abroad…. U. S. officials, working in newly democratic countries don’t spend much time encouraging laws that would allow the second place candidate for national office to triumph.

There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of office in the presence of the People but there is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial

While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had no national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage.

...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.

And so it is that I carry with me from this State to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories and fast friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts - the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant - will not be and could not be forgotten in the Nations Executive Mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, my hopes for the future.

If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.

The office of Vice President is a greater dream than I ever expected.