These 10 presidential quotes were gathered and explained by folklorist and free lance writer Ben Gazur. He went into some detail about the background of each quote, which I am not going to do. Let it simply be a test of your knowledge of each of these presidents that you recognize the quotes. Mr. Gazur gave the background of each quotation, and its significance in history. Since I tend to write about politics a lot, they seem apropos. I’d need some time and some access to political books read to compile my own Top Ten Presidential quotes, but these are all good.
The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant… I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.
— George Washington
A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
— Abraham Lincoln
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
— Abraham Lincoln
It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.
— Woodrow Wilson
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
The United States pledges before you — and therefore before the world, its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma — to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.
— Dwight Eisenhower
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
— John F. Kennedy
We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in… It is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
— Lyndon Johnson
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
— Ronald Reagan
For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we’ve been told we’re not ready or that we shouldn’t try or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.
— Barack Obama