My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don’t think Kennedy should have done it. I don’t think Johnson should have done it, and I don’t think we should have done it.

There is no inherent power in the office of the vice presidency. Zero. None. It’s all a reflection of your relationship with the president. I mean, Kennedy never let Johnson in the office.

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

WWE asked me to be in the Hall of Fame, and I turned it down. You know why? They put Pete Rose in the wrestling Hall of Fame. This guy can’t even get into his own Hall of Fame.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

I do not like the human race. I don’t like their heads, I don’t like their faces, I don’t like their feet, I don’t like their conversations, I don’t like their hairdos, I don’t like their automobiles.

Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton.

‚Via Dolorosa‘ is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and I’ll never act again.

Folks, I can tell you I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately.

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be ‚Citizens United.‘ I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

My lawyer has been a good friend of mine for a long time. He and I continuously have conversations.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

The atom bomb was no ‚great decision.‘ It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America.