Presidential Knowledge Quotes

What did the President know and when did he know it?

Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

We have a new President who knows nothing about foreign affairs and a Vice President who thinks he knows everything about foreign affairs.

Sometimes, when you look at an adviser's failings or perceived failings, I think the tough question you have to ask as a journalist is, 'What does this say about the president?'

I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.

President Kennedy knew every agent by name. President Johnson knew many of us, but not as many as President Kennedy, probably.

I'm not going to give President Bush any advice. He knows. He knows what I think.

[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.

The central question is simply put: What did the president know and when did he know it?

It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing.

Well, it is alarming to have a president [Reagan] who doesn't know what he is doing.

Remember how he handled the Iran-contra Never Ending Scandal from Hell? He went on national television, the President of the United States, and said it wasn't his fault, because he was not aware, at the time, of what his foreign policy was.

As far as I know, all the presidents know about Area 51. It would almost be impossible for them not to.

In my opinion governors don't make the best presidents. That's my opinion and it's because they don't have the foreign policy experience and they have to learn on the job.

I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'

I would be concerned if any speech to Congress related any information that's new to the president of the United States.

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.

I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.

I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

When they ask me who's the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know? And then I'm going to say how's that going to create one job?

I believe that presidents up through and including George Bush have known that Americans were left alive and in violation of law, these high officials and certain of their appointed subordinates have continued and perpetrated a cover up of this reality.

I think Hillary Clinton understands the ins and outs of the White House better than anyone who's come before her.

The office of the President is so staggeringly complicated that nobody can ... be a good President.

I've known Hillary Clinton for a long time. She's trustworthy. She's ready from Day One to assume the office of presidency in the United States. She's qualified and she's ready as compared to, I think, Donald Trump, who has shown his recklessness, and dangerous statements that he's made.