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Quotes of the Day for 30 October 2004 - The Presidency

My database has several quotes that say, essentially, that anyone who wants to be president should certainly be disqualified from holding the office. As usually happens every four years, I find myself faced with two major candidates, neither of which I'd like to have sitting in the Oval Office. But on Tuesday we will trudge off to the polls to cast our votes for Tweedledum or Tweedledee, or maybe register a protest by voting for one of the horde of minor-party candidates, so we'll start looking at political quotes today. I thought we'd start with some comments from those who know the job best.

I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without my persuading them. That's all the powers of the President amount to.
     - Harry S Truman, 1884 - 1972

[The President is] the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.
     - James A. Garfield, 1831 - 1881

I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a President, and I think I'll go along with them.
     - John Calvin Coolidge, 1872 - 1933

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
     - John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but stand there and take it.
     - Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908 - 1973

The thought of being president frightens me. I do not think I want the job.
     - Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911 - 2004

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