Post-Presidency Quotes

I wanted to continue to be active on those things that I cared about when I was president where I could still have an impact.

I think it's hilarious the way Obama is depicted post-presidency. He's always kayaking or playing jai alai like he's some retired athlete or something. Like he wasn't doing the exact same thing everybody else was doing.

I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind.

Carter's done a lot more good since he's been out of the White House than when he was in it.

When you leave the White House, you wonder if you’ll ever draw a crowd again.

I think my dad's post-presidency, he didn't miss a beat. He didn't get into any kind of 'Woe is me.' He dusted himself off and led an incredible life since 1993.

When you're a former president, you have much less power, but you have a lifetime of experience and contacts and if you've got the energy, you can bring influence to bear on a small but still fairly substantial number of things where you can concentrate on it because you don't have to change the subject when you wake up in the morning and there's something else in the newspaper.

I'd love to interview Bill Clinton. I know that might be a little boring, but he's so interesting and such an amazing guy. All he's done after his presidency... he hasn't just sat around, he's been so active in so many charitable causes.

George H. W. Bush. He's been a classy guy in his post-presidency.

Well, there doesn't seem anything else for an ex-President to do but go into the country and raise big pumpkins.

Now that I am no longer President, I find I can no longer win every game of golf I play.

John Quincy Adams ranks with Jimmy Carter on the roster of ex-presidential redemption. Instead of completing a biography of his father, he let himself be elected to the House, where he spent nine terms in Whiggish opposition to the Democrats, supporting a national bank and a protective tariff and internal improvements.

Long after Donald Trump is no longer President Trump, I know there will still be a relationship there.

One thing you had to learn [after the presidency] was that you no longer had the sense of responsibility that became ingrained in your system.

I left the White House but I’m still here.

I am looking forward to getting out of the bubble. I am glad that I'm leaving this place at a relatively young age, at 55. So I have the opportunity for a second maybe even a third act in a way that I think would be tougher if I were, you know, the age of some presidents when they left.

Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office.

Life after the White House found Dad enjoying having his grandchildren around and letting go of all the enormous burden he shouldered throughout his public life.

My post-presidency is evolving.

There is one good thing about no longer being President. You can make your own notes and say what you want. Of course no one cares any more what you say.

There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.

I have somehow, continued to miss Oktoberfest so that's probably something that is better for me to do as a former president rather than as president, I'll have more fun.

If someone came to me and said, "Your strategy in your post-presidency is brilliant," as if I had figured out a way to make me look better, to me, that analysis is amusing.

No president stays in town. They all decamp. They all leave. They go back somewhere. But Obama is gonna stay there, and there's one reason why. He's not going to sit quietly by... Let's say there's a Republican elected president. He's not gonna sit quietly by and let whatever he thinks he's accomplished be unraveled. He's gonna be speaking up often about what he disagrees with, and he knows he's gonna have the media in his back pocket.

I'm forever a former president and I understand that, but at this point in my post-presidency, I don't want to be involved with politics.