George H. W. Bush

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

We don’t want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

Well, I think everybody is frustrated by the finances of the U.N. and the inability to solve problems of war and peace.

Armies are not only for offensives.

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life.

[on Bill and Hillary Clinton] Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.

It’s better not to argue with women.

I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns… as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

The Middle East is hopeful. There’s hope there.

The introduction, for example, of restrictive tariffs on steel, on aluminum, not only for Europe but also for Canada and Mexico, in essence these are also sanctions… They are related to the pragmatic national interests of the United States.

You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.

When…the people are invested with the supreme authority…they discover a multitude of wants… to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the state.

Over the last 25 years, the major popular movements that have had significant impact on the general society and have changed it, that have had a major civilizing effect – the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and so on – these are mostly developments of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Their roots might be in the activism of the ‘60s, but the movements themselves developed and extended later. The same is true of the changes in respect for other cultures, rights of oppressed people, and so on. These are quite significant changes. If you compare the United States now to what it was, say, 35 years ago, the changes are quite dramatic. These are changes in popular consciousness that are quite deeply embedded.

One of the reasons the US wants to control the oil is because profits flow back and they flow in a lot of ways. Its not just oil profits, it’s also military sales. The biggest purchaser of US arms and probably British arms is either Saudi Arabia or UAE, one of the rich oil producers.

In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.

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