Rick Santelli Quotes

When you are President you have to get something done, and that often means compromise.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

My speech has to have some substance to it. I don’t care if we make a peace treaty or declare war or something. Otherwise, they’re going to run us out of town.

There is an increasing demand that the president and Secretary Hull get rid of the unteachable group in the State Department of men who have not learned, after ten years of experience, that appeasement has never worked anywhere, at any time.

Diplomacy and coalition-building are hard work and not easy for any president.

But I would not refuse a meeting with Putin. I would like to spend a week with Putin, so that I could better understand him.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

The world cannot be governed without juggling.

There's no way that I could be the president. You can't have a pacifist in the White House... I'm an actor. This is what I do for a living.

I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.

So with the end of the Cold War, it became increasingly obvious that there was no basis upon which any decision was being made, not in the White House, and certainly because of that, not in the Congress.

I'm not ready to be that guy who can meet with world leaders and all that. It's tremendous what Bono does. I don't know if I could do it, not the way he does. I don't think many people could.

The wound-tight, travel-light Obama has a distaste for the adversarial and the random. But if you stick too rigidly to a 'No Drama' rule in the White House, you risk keeping reality at bay. Presidencies are always about crisis management.

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.

Statesmanship is harder than politics. Politics is the art of getting along with people, whereas statesmanship is the art of getting along with politicians.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

I can't do anything too serious like Saddam Hussein, but I would like to do Bill Clinton. That'd be fun.

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

Politicians make pacts; people make peace.

Yasser Arafat was the epitome of gracious Arab hospitality. I must have had 1000 meals with him. The problem was that he could never translate that hospitality to negotiations.

The most important thing that the person at the White House knows when he talks to you is that you are not in there.

War is too serious a matter to be entrusted to generals.

Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace – but a peace I hope with honour.

Dr. Kissinger is a man you can talk to.