Presidential Retirement Quotes

As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.

I intend to withdraw after my second term. General Washington set the example. I will follow.

It is a national disgrace that after having occupied the highest position in the country, that our presidents should be cast adrift, and perhaps be compelled to keep a corner grocery for substance.

We have entered the era of the “imperial” former presidency with lavish libraries, special staffs and benefits, around-the-clock Secret Service protection for life and other badges of privilege.

Reagan is the only man to take the presidency as a part-time job, a means of filling up the otherwise empty hours of retirement.

Because of the increase in life longevity, America can now assume that at any given time three, and perhaps four, former presidents will still be alive, even when the current president is occupying the White House.

Heads of France lead from a palace, and traditionally they retire to a cloud.

Mrs. Madison was a remarkably fine woman. She was beloved by everybody in Washington, white and colored. Whenever soldiers marched by, during the war, she always sent out and invited them in to take wine and refreshments, giving them liberally of the best in the house…. In the last days of her life, before Congress purchased her husband's papers, she was in a state of absolute poverty, and I think sometimes suffered for the necessaries of life. While I was a servant to Mr. (Daniel) Webster, he often sent me to her with a market-basket full of provisions, and told me whenever I saw anything in the house that I thought she was in need of, to take it to her. I often did this, and occasionally gave her small sums from my own pocket, though I had years before bought my freedom of her.

Taxpayers should not be on the hook for subsidizing former presidents' lives to the tune of millions of dollars.

Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.

I think it eminently proper that a president should retire from active politics, and equally proper that he should be able to live in quiet independence.