Thomas R. Marshall Quotes

There is an old story about the mother who had two sons. One went to sea, and the other became vice-president, and neither was ever heard of again.

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.

The one thing we can all be sure about in politics is you are as well to expect the unexpected.

History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

The thing with children is they're a bit like baking a fruitcake: you throw all the ingredients in but you never know how they're going to turn out.

When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.

Vice president - it has such a nice ring to it!

Sometimes you want to run away, sometimes you think you do, but you never had a dream like this before and you don't want to ask for more, sometimes you leave a mark before you know the score.

Strictly by the nature of 'Veep,' in any given moment, a lot can go wrong.

I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America. But it doesn't mean I won't run.

It's something you hope doesn't happen. When you sign on to do a job, you hope you'll be able to get it done. But that's not always in your control.

No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.

I've known ambitious people with no aptitude for the thing they did. Most of whom, rather terrifyingly, tended to succeed.

I don't rule out anything in my future.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

It is an endless procession of surprises. The expected rarely occurs and never in the expected manner.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn't know it.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

I am Vice President. I am nothing but I may be everything.

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