Barbara Tuchman Quotes

What comes into the Oval Office are not the good or easy decisions. The easy decisions are made elsewhere. The things that make it to the Oval are always the hard ones.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

As a policymaker, as a public servant, I come to Washington, D.C., and I make difficult decisions and I make difficult decisions every day. And sometimes those decisions upset people.

Things said by political parties are different from the decisions of the government which are taken to uphold the rule of law. The government takes decisions that are best for the country.

Because the task of a political leader is to do what he believes is better for his country. Sometimes the public opinion is in favor; sometimes the public opinion needs a little bit more time to understand things.

The most difficult issues—the toughest decisions—are the ones that invariably end up on the President’s desk.

At the end of the day, the government, local government all bow to public pressure.

As mayor, I'm in the frying pan. I'm just sitting here on the griddle now, and I've got to really think, you know, do I want to stay here on the griddle?

When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.

Leaders respond when they perceive that there will be a political cost of inaction.

No sitting administration likes to see itself studied; no administration welcomes investigations.

We are fortunate in the fact that an amazingly large segment of the population, and even of his own party, seems to dislike and mistrust Nixon instinctively.

The President is accountable only to the country.

One of the problems of being a prime minister is that you can't do what people want all at once.

When you're in the real world as President of the United States it doesn't go according to the script.

The presidency is not about easy choices.

Our government has become a system rather than a living expression of the popular will.

You cannot make elected officials … do what they will not do.

[Describing the presidency:] ... the organ of the will of the nation ... elective kingship.

... the decisive engine of impeachment.

We don't possess this job and this job doesn't possess us. We have to make some very tough decisions. If it means falling on the sword, it means falling on the sword.

[Describing the presidency:] No one in the country is more assailed by divergent advice and clamorous counsel.

Working in the White House is a relentlessly demanding responsibility.

it does not make any difference whether it were the Republican or Democratic Party. It is the business of the party in power to face the American Nation, stand responsible for the conduct of its administration, and to give the people of this Nation a prosecution in this case that will restore the confidence of the people not in the party in power merely, or any party, but in their Government, in the integrity of their public officials.

The presidency is a place that is hemmed with all sorts of constraints and limitations. I don't think the American people quite know that the presidency is really a juggling act of competing pressures.