- Benjamin Disraeli on being asked to withdraw his comment in a parliamentary debate that half the cabinet were asses.
"I'm one of those mayors whose management style is to allow free and unlimited debate, to a point."
"It is perfectly American to be wrong."
"We will create new Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. I will not hesitate to deploy nuclear weapons. You know what Chernobyl meant for our country. You will get your own Chernobyl in Germany."
"I see no media mention of it, but we entered in - you asked what time it is and I'm telling you how to build a watch here - but we had Boris Yelstin here the other day. And I think of my times campaigning in Iowa, years ago, and how there was a - Iowa has a kind of, I single out Iowa, it's kind of an international state in a sense and has a great interest in all these things - and we had Yelstin standing here in the Rose Garden [White House], and we entered into a deal to eliminate the biggest and most threatening ballistic missiles ... and it was almost, "'Ho-hum, what have you done for me lately?'"
"And I was with him, and I sensed, uh ...Stop!...And we stopped. And he got out of the car. So, he controls the agenda. And I saw that, yeah."
"You know, in Chicago we have a very unusual association with people that work for us."
"My first qualification for mayor of the city of New York is my monumental ingratitude to each and all of you."
"This is all it costs to become mayor of New York city. Of course, there was that nine million and the five million before that...."
"In the Bible of campaign politics it says, 'In the beginning was the word, the word was money.' But the idea that there is some gargantuan amount of money that one must raise in order to be a competitive candidate for president remains to be proven."
"It was very worth it."
"There's nothing wrong with this country that we couldn't cure by turning it over to the police for a couple of weeks."
"It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things people might remember."
"It's my personal belief that if they're not rehabilitated after 15 years, kill 'em."
"We in America are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of the land.... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation."
"As of now, I am in control now."
"If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it.
"I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America."
"It is about a Socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
Vicki Carr: "What's you favorite Mexican dish?"
"I am delighted with some of the women that our [Republican] senate candidates are going to be taking on because they will be easier to beat."
"[They're] trying to prove their manhood."
"Because she's a damn lesbian. I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine."
"Availability was the only ability sought by the Whigs."
"Gross terminological inexactitude"
Gerald Ford "played football too long without a helmet" and as a result was "so dumb he can't walk and fart at the same time."
"A triumph of the embalmer's art"
"[Reagan's] a stupid bore who couldn't get a job in pictures, which is why he went into politics."
"He's got a mean little temper. Maybe he ought to go home."
"I'd be ashamed to make my living the way you make yours, asshole."
"Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Coolidge only snores."
"It's tiring and stressful. It's not just the hours. It's having to think while you're here."
"I am not a crook. I've earned every penny I've got."
"My recollection is a little different. What passes between two people...it's just very difficult, very painful."
SOURCE: 'More Political Babble', David Olive, 1996.
- Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, DC 1987.
- Newt Gingrich 1984.
- Vladimir Zhirinovsky 1993 complaining about alleged German interference in Russian affairs.
- George Bush defending his record as president on "CBS This Morning."
- George Bush 1988 responding to a reporter whether Mikhail Gorbachev completely controls Soviet govt.
- rep Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill) 1994 defending himself against charges that he kept phantom employees on the payroll.
- Fiorello LaGuardi - to his campaign supporters of his election victory 1933.
- Rudolph Giuliani 1994 paying the traditional 15-cent clerk fee to take his oath of office as mayor of New York, on the cost of his two mayoral campaigns.
- Haley Barbour chairman of the Republican National Committee 1995 commenting on reports that GOP presidential candidates will be permitted by law to spend about $44 million each on the primary races and that an aggressive effort by presidential hopefuls to raise these funds from special interests at the same time they are attacking the curse of special-interest influence over congress is polluting the democratic process.
- rep Michael Huffington (R-Cal) 1994 after spending $28 million of his own money in a failed bid to unseat Dianne Feinstein in the US senate race.
- George Wallace 1967 - Georgia governor
- senator Eugene McCarthy
- Tim Jennings (D-New Mexico) 1995 on what should be done with incorrigible prison inmates and criminals
- Herbert Hoover, 1928.
- Alexander Haig, secretary of state 1981, after attempted assassination of pres Ronald Reagan. The line of succession run through vp, speaker of the house and others before reaching secretary of state.
"
- Calvin Coolidge
- Harry Truman c1911. By 1940 senator Truman believed in "brotherhood of all men, not merely the brotherhood of white men, but the brotherhood of all men before the law."
"
- televangelist and 1988 GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson, currently president of the Christian Coalition, in 1992 on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.
Pres Gerald Ford: "You are."
- George Bush 1992 on the senate races
- pres candidate Ross Perot 1992, describing women reporters who ask irksome questions.
- senator Jesse Helms 1993 on his efforts to block the appointment of openly gay Roberta Achtenberg as assistant secretary of housing and urban development.
- senator Thomas Hart Benton 1839 on Whig pres candidate William Henry Harrison who became 23rd pres USA.
- substitution for 'deliberate falsification' 1966 UK parliament.
- L B Johnson
- Gore Vidal on Ronald Reagan's agelessness.
- Frank Sinatra
- Barry Goldwater on Bob Dole 1993. Two years later Goldwater endorsed Dole's presidential bid, saying; "Bob Dole is a man whose courage and conviction have been tested again and again."
- Jake Garn former Utah senator 1994 during a corporate-funded ski event to reporter Steve Wilson.
Steve replied - "It's better than being a bought-and-paid-for US senator."
- HL Mencken.
- rep Henry Hyde 1995 on the exhausting work required to pass elements of the GOP's 'Contract with America' in the first 100 days of the 104th congress.
- Nixon 1973
- Newt Gingrich 1989 responding to allegations of him having gone to his wife's hospital room carrying divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery.
