Dave Barry Quotes

Normal people don't just wake up in the morning and say I think it'd be a good idea to run for president of the United States.

It looks to me like any man that wants to be President in times like these lacks something.

Politics comes and goes, but your principles don't. And everybody wants to be loved -- not everybody. ... You never heard anybody say, 'I want to be despised, I'm running for office.'

I had not even thought of running for president until one day in 1991, at a small fund-raiser, completely unanticipated, someone stood up and said, 'Hey, Mario, in all the years we've supported you, we've never heard you talk about the presidency, and we want to know why not.'

The moral element … ministers, professors, and respectable persons … do not believe politics should be pursued as a trade.

It's really hard to get to know me, or any candidate. And I would be asked questions like, well, why are you really running for president?

In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome.

It has now become the doctrine of a large class of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

You have to be a little bit crazy to run for the office of President…. It’s a job that you have to be totally consumed with, and that itself is somewhat crazy..

In Washington, and wherever two or more politicians may gather, he who does not get caught has ‘character’ and he who gets caught has none..

I don't want to be known as a politician.

I think I'm ready to lead. I'm ready first to be a supportive vice president so that the presidency of Hillary Clinton is a fantastic one. But if something were to put that in my path, as much as any human being would be ready, I'd be ready. And you gotta approach it with humility.

The idea that I should become president seems to me too visionary to require a serious answer. It has never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any other person.

I think maybe the people in elected positions are more interested in preserving their jobs than in doing the best job possible.

I can't stop people from writing imaginative stories about me entering politics.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer.

I didn't get into politics to play a character on TV.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? This is a question I'm often asked as a politician. It tends to be closely followed by a dozen other questions about what I'll do in 'x' scenario or whether I'll resign if 'y' happens.

I don't have power or money and one-sided media support or the inclination to stoop to any level for the sake of power.

I didn't think I was ever going to run for office.

When you are in the public eye, in the name of public service, you have to understand that the more people know about you, and the more people say they want to support you, the more you have to work even harder to uphold that trust.

I have no ambitions to become the PM.

Even if I am paid in crores, I have no interest to venture to politics.

I just didn't have the desire to run for political office. There are other things that I like to do, and it just wasn't my choice. But if it had been my choice, I certainly would have done it.

To want to become the President is, I think, such a bizarre ambition that it is automatically deranging.