Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I got to be White House chief of staff, ten years of congressman, secretary of defense, vice-president. If you're a political junkie like I obviously am - that was - every one of those was just a tremendous experience. I'm very comfortable with what I did and why I did it and how I did it. And I'll let others judge whether they liked it or not.

It would be wonderful to be a member of the United States Senate.

[Warren] Harding didn't like being a Senator; he liked being in the Senate.

Congress is the great commanding theater of this nation, and the threshold to whatever department of office a man is qualified to enter.

I am possessed of two separate powers; the one in esse and the other in posse. I am Vice President. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything. But I am President also of the Senate.

When I was a young man, I used to dream maybe someday I could be an alderman. Instead of that I became an attorney general, a senator, a vice president, a Democratic nominee.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

I'm not serving in office because I desperately needed 99 new friends in the U.S. Senate.

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator - just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.

I grew up thinking that if I wanted to go be prime minister, I could.

I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.

I'm not going to rule out running for a second term. But, I think you have to be psychologically prepared to walk away from the job after four years. It's the only way that you cannot be influenced by those special interests.

It is a great privilege for any man to become a member of the Senate.

I loved being in the Senate. That was a wonderful experience.

Rock stars generally don't last in the Senate, starting with John Kennedy. Too much work, too slow, too little juice. Getting something accomplished takes a remarkable amount of tedious work. Rock stars who become senators either run for something else or retire on the job. They certainly don't make a mark.

I have no political ambitions for myself or my children.

Serving in the United States Senate has been the greatest privilege of my life.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier, Christmas Day of 1982, just after I had been first elected to a full term, that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

There is absolutely no way that I would enter that world. I would never run for office.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

I didn't get to the Senate by accident.

If you look at where presidents come from, they're former governors or senators.

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

It had better be known in the outset whether the President is the head of the government or the registering clerk of the Senate.

The second office of the government is honorable & easy; the first is but a splendid misery.