Dick Cheney quotes: the politician, businessman, and former Vice President’s most interesting insight.
“You wake up every morning with a smile on your face because you’ve got a new day you never expected to have. And there’s a sense of wonderment. Nothing short of magical.”
“It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.”
“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults.”
“I’ve worked for four Presidents and watched two others up close, and I know that there’s no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office.”
“My own belief is that the way we grow the economy, create jobs, create wealth, is in the private sector. The government doesn’t do that.”
“I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don’t write any.”
“Under our plan you can build wealth, even if you don’t have a dollar to spare.”
“We’ve had experiences where the President’s been shot, but never had a situation where the Vice President shot somebody.”
“You cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they’re easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions, they go up, they go down.”
“There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.”
“We’ve never made the case, or argued the case, that somehow Osama Bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming.”
“You really do think about it institutionally; this is your job, and to some extent you benefit from having a job to do at a moment like this. You have things that you have to make happen. And you don’t have time for the emotional reaction that might otherwise occur if somebody was just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities.”
“We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed – something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States.”
“If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.”
“I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.”
“We need from time to time to use military force or all of the resources at our command in order to defend the nation and defend our friends. Sometimes that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I think there probably are some who actually believe if we just go talk nice to these folks, everything’s going to be okay. I don’t think the world works that way.”
“After 9/11, it became clear that we [the United States] had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists wherever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.”
“I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there’s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.”
“The greatest threat now is a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities… there’s a high probability of such an attempt.”
“There’s every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy.”
“I feel very strongly that the significance of 9/11 cannot be underestimated. It forces us to think in new ways about strategy, about national security, about how we structure our forces and about how we use U.S. military power.”
“It’s awfully hard to convey a sense of credibility to allies when you [the Congress] voted for the war and then you declared: ‘Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.’”
“And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.”
“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes.”
“Rarely has a U.S. President been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
“Obviously, it’s a big problem: how do we provide quality care to the maximum number of people? And it’s not an easy problem to solve.”
“I got sick, hospitalized, had no insurance. And the money I had saved for our honeymoon went to pay medical bills. So I had been in the position of not having insurance when I needed health care.”
“I think I was able to survive five heart attacks because I never postponed going to the hospital when something didn’t feel right.”
“I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate that I’ve been able to go live a very active, stressful life. And I don’t believe that my heart disease changed me for the worst.”
“Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”
“I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I also believe that gay and lesbians and gay and lesbian couples, those who have been in long-term relationships, deserve to be treated respectfully, they deserve to have benefits.”
“I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish.”
“Well, we’ve got a major effort under way to try to educate everybody, to let them know we have a zero tolerance policy where sexual assault is involved.”
“As I think about the future, I’m back where most people live their lives. Which is, death is not imminent, and that’s different.”
“We need to have a pro-growth policy put in place that offers people hope and offers the opportunity for businesses to expand and for them to have confidence in what the world is going to look like for the next two or three or four years with respect to economic policy.”
Now flip the script and read Michelle Obama’s quotes next.
