George W. Bush Quotes

I was a born troublemaker and might as well earn a living at it.

The relationship between the press and the president is always inherently bad; it's never good.

When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what's going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it's trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.

I am a whole lot of trouble.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.

Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.

Turmoil stimulates.

This is an era of violent peace.

The press has a tendency to focus on what politicians disagree on.

If you guys would stop asking questions about the Iraq War, there would be no problem at all.

My role is to bear witness and to bring back what people see and tell you.

In a bad year in this country, we have 600 people die in airplane crashes. We have 150 die a day in automobiles. Automobile accidents are simply not news. People are not reacting to them, unless you have a phenomenal accident where five or ten people are killed at once, and that will get to be big news. But you've got to concentrate it to produce the news. On the other hand, airplanes, a little bit like nuclear power, have an awesome safety record. And yet, a plane crash where 100 people are killed is news, not just locally but all over the world, quite literally. So the concentration of deaths is very important.

… a major threat to regional stability.

Burke said there were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

How do you know the news is reliable if you didn’t gather it yourself?

If the press doesn’t get the proper care and feeding, you don’t get the proper spin on your story.

When there is a conflict between a [network] corporation and the needs of it’s news division, the corporate interest will win out.

War is unsettling.

Reality is often measurably different from the perception projected through the media. But the speed of that projection, and thus of that perception and of the public’s response thereto, is such that policy must now be made in response not to the reality but to the perception. Thus the media have the power (consciously or not) to create a perception that can force a response which objectively becomes "reality" but which may have nothing to do with the original "real" reality. This contributes not only to the appearance of chaos but also to the making of crises.

Misunderstanding is the great enemy of every White House press secretary.

Of all times in time of war the press should be free.

Our job is to get as close to the verified truth as is possible.

It’s a lot easier and cheaper to have thumbsuckers and pundits on television than it is to have reporters and news bureaus around the world.