Lara Giddings Quotes

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them.

Almost nobody is thought of as presidential caliber until he gets himself elected.

The closer you get to Number 10 the more you see what a back-breaking job that is, the pressure is absolutely constant and the loss of privacy is almost complete so I don't have ambitions in that direction and there is no vacancy nor likely to be during my time in politics.

Stevenson had noble ideas--as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.

If enough Americans determine I could do a better job in public office, and Mrs. Nugent and my beloved family agree, there is no limit what I am willing to do for my country.

If I'm going to be president, I will try the best I can, and I'm a very good dealmaker, believe me.

The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. And that has a lot to do with trust.

I'm offering myself up. I'm saying that if I have the background, the capability and the concern to do this and I'm doing this for the right reasons... but I'm not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I'd make a good president. Nowadays, the process has become much more important than I think it used to be.

I'm going to do everything I can to be the best president I can be for all America.

You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.

In elective politics, it's up or out. You go up the ladder, or you get out of the game.

I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen. I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.

God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.

Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.

This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency

Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

Would it be better to have a president who cries easily? Well, that depends on what he cried about. I would not like the thought of a president who could not cry. That would be worse than one who cried over the right things. Which, in this case, would be the things I would cry over.

I've heard it for years, if you're very successful you can't run for high office, especially for President.

If you allowed yourself to hear or feel amusement, you would hear and feel pain.

The thing that would probably surprise most people was that Dr. Martin Luther King was a very reluctant leader. He felt very shocked at times that he had been chosen for this path, but he also understood that he was chosen for this path. He had several moments of acute doubt as to if he was up for the task - when people were injured in the protests he took it very personally, let alone when they were killed.

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

Many people wants to be the president...they have ambition. Just ambition is not enough.

If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will grow stronger and return.

It's probably a prerequisite for the job, or at least you have to have enough craziness to think that you can do the job. I think that [Donald Trump] has not spent a lot of time sweating the details of, you know, all the policies.

If I can make a generalization, men get into politics because, from the time they're little boys, they've been wanting to be President.