George H. W. Bush

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn’t happen 20 years ago.

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

I know my serve stinks, but I was a pretty good tennis player.

Sometimes, the only way to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living…

When you want nothing from anyone else, you’re safe for anyone to be with. Including yourself.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen. So I’m always game for a good joke, and I’m not so formal in this role. There’s very little that we can’t do that people wouldn’t appreciate.

What is important is not the right doctrine but the attainment of the true experience. It is giving up believing in belief.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.

You can’t put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken!

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

There is nothing ever wrong with ability, ambition, achievement; but they can easily be wronged by being used to bad ends.

Silence is so accurate.

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream… I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

Does anyone ask their parents how they are conceived?

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.