Bush Quotations

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.

In 1991, only two years into the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice suddenly left her powerful job as the top Russia expert on the National Security Council and went back to California - to get a life.

You know, when President Reagan, who was one of my idols, granted amnesty to about three million illegal immigrants it was based on the fact that the borders would be secured. That didn't happen. It didn't happen during the Bush administration.

President-elect Bush spoke in a forceful and candid manner that it is his passion that all children should have access to a first class education.

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is.

You don't need a digital David Petraeus or a President Bush avatar to distract you from the truth. You don't need to wait decades to have disinformation beamed into your head. You just need a constant stream of misleading information, half truths, and fictions to be promoted, pushed, and peddled until they are accepted as fact.

Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi - a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune.

I grew up in the African bush in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, which is my thing. I love the smell of the dust as you bump along in a Land-Rover. I go back there often.

Not too many years ago, both parties acknowledged that our entitlement commitments were a sword hanging over our heads. But when President George W. Bush tried to begin discussions on Social Security reform, Democrats ridiculed and demonized him and told seniors he was after their nest eggs.

The standard rumor at the time was that Rumsfeld, as chief of staff, had persuaded President Ford to appoint George H.W. Bush as director of Central Intelligence, assuming that that got rid of a potential competitor for the presidency.

A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.

The Bush administration also was not straightforward about the intelligence it had, releasing tenuous information that fit its goal of attacking Iraq. I feel deceived.

Well, I would never admit to copying Karl Rove's play book, but there's no doubt that what the Bush people did in 2004 was impressive. They had neighbors talking to neighbors. They did a remarkable job increasing Republican turnout in states like Ohio and Florida.

George W. Bush was a silver spoon dolt with no record to speak of other than bankruptcy and selling tropical plants, and we let him sail into the White House, but Barack talks about religious fundamentalism and guns being prevalent in poor areas, and we roast him for weeks?

I'll never forget when we played Shepherd's Bush in London. We played 'I Run To You', and we put the mic out for the last chorus, and you could hear them singing the chorus with the beautiful accent that they have.

Laura Bush is the same way. I mean, they both, um, understand, they understand the challenges of the moment and understand the responsibilities, he understands the responsibilities he has to protect the national security of America as well as the economic security of America.

I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.

Every few thousand years some shepard inhales smoke from a burning bush and has a vision or eats moldy rye bread in a cave and sees God.

Bush is a very poor impromptu speaker. He does fine in small groups but when speaking without a script in front of large groups or answering questions he wasn't prepped for, he has problems.

The whole macho thing has to be reexamined. Because in my view, the Bush administration was weak, not strong. To engage in a policy of torture is a weak policy. Because ultimately, it encourages the terrorists. It undermines our own values. It corrupts our system. And it doesn't get good intelligence.

When you were a teenager in Colorado, the way to be a punk rocker was to rip on Reagan and Bush and what they were doing and talk about how everyone in Colorado's a redneck with a gun and all this stuff.

Women and children were slaughtered by the Taliban. You are going to sit down and negotiate with these folks? They never lived up to an agreement. The Pakistanis tried in '08, the Russians tried it when they were there. George Bush tried it in '05. It has never worked.

President Bush says he is concerned about the Iraqi people, but if Iraqi people are dying in numbers, then American policy will be challenged very strongly.

President Bush was disgusted by the Assad regime's oppression of the Syrian people as well as its support for terrorism, interference in Lebanon, and encouragement of jihadist attacks on Americans in Iraq.

Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize Bush to take the nation to war. Most of them did so in the belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace.

One thing that in my reporting that I found and was amazed to find was that, as far as I could determine, neither high-level White House officials in the Bush administration nor even the top brass at the CIA even knew the history of water boarding when they approved it.

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class.

This is my first visit to Africa, a region where President Bush has voiced a deep passion for fostering and encouraging economic development, investment and trade.

If I may discuss the idea of explosion. The number of regulations issued in the last two years is approximately the same as the number issued in the last two years of the Bush administration.

It's my belief that by demonizing Saddam, by raising the stakes in this war to the point where we're talking about a great moral crusade, that Bush in fact planted the seeds of discontent in the country, because this was fundamentally a limited war with limited objectives and with limited gains.

I have had the most wonderful childhood, and I was raised in a very loving family. And it was nothing short of an amazing privilege because I was incredibly lucky to be able to play up in trees and make it like silly dens in a bush and stuff like that.

I have continuously said that, at the very minimum, the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000 should be extended.

When George W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon and verifiably wasn't producing any more.

Dr. Louis Bush Swisher died from the complications of a brain aneurysm that burst without warning one sunny Sunday morning less than 40 years ago.

What President Bush has done speaks more than words about his feeling of compassion and commitment to people.

In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil, basically, and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting.

We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place.

Eisenhower was less deferential to the military than he seemed likely to be, Kennedy was not at all beholden to the pope, George W. Bush was smarter than portrayed and Barack Obama has not led a charge from the left - least of all on behalf of the civil liberties that have eroded since September 11, 2001.

I think Bush has capitulated on affirmative action and government spending. Apart from that, he's OK, I guess. About the same as Howard Dean.

Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United State the role of promoting freedom in the world.

Since losing his reelection in 2002, Barr has lost not only his power but also many of his friends. It doesn't help that after alienating nearly every Democrat with impeachment, he spent the next five years alienating his fellow Republicans - railing against the invasion of Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, and the Bush administration in general.

I think that both men, Bush and Blair, will be damned in history. Both men have made their respective countries the two most hated countries in the world.

Even President Bush has cited the need to outlaw the practice of corporations making loans to their officers. Strangely enough, when the President was a corporate officer, he took out several loans from the company.

It would be a tragic mistake for us out here to imagine that Bush represents the hearts and the minds of the majority of your countrymen. Many of your black and other compatriots must be just as anguished as we are.

We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases.

The calls that I have received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the fact that there are other people that are suffering every bit as much as I am, and that our whole nation is going through a tragedy together, I think we have to think about those things.

President Bush offers the American people an optimistic vision and a clear choice in November. The President has provided steady leadership in remarkably changing times. He knows exactly where he wants to lead this country, and he has complete confidence in the American people.

I would say to my colleague that the misery index, inflation and unemployment, when added together is the lowest it has been in the last series of Presidents, even going back to Jimmy Carter. So I think the Bush administration is doing a good job.

In the sweep of history, George W. Bush will be seen as one of our greatest presidents because of the decisions he made to keep us safe after 9/11.

Even though the Bush campaign ad tells you that Afghanistan is a new democracy at the Olympics because of Bush's efforts, Afghanistan hasn't actually had an election.

If we are lucky, and George W. Bush is right, we are about to witness the War of the Happy Iraqis.

I am appreciative of the Bush administration's commitment to fair trade by looking at the facts in this case and ruling affirmatively for the implementation of quotas in this specific category.

In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

I am from the bush. The bush did not define me. I did not stay in the bush, but I never forgot where I came from.

If you ask me what am I, I might say 'I am a Californian,' and if George Bush were here, he would say 'I am a Texan.'

Once again, we see the Bush administration paying for its failed policies by cutting funds to vital public services and jeopardizing more American jobs.

Bush is a frat boy in the White House but we've had that before. But I wasn't one of those people that was threatening to leave the country. By the way none of those people have left the country. Alec Baldwin is still here.

Bush already gave obscene tax breaks to people like me and Warren Buffet, and we are saying it's not fair.

The Bush administration actually started out with an open mind towards Iran, by all indications. In fact, early in the administration, the White House tasked the various agencies of government to do an inter-agency review of Iran policy, as it did with Iraq policy and most of the big areas of the world.

We realize too late that President Bush shouldn't have taken us into Iraq, and President Obama shouldn't have taken us out.

Bush has never sent over a balanced budget.

Looking back, all I can say is that the meeting with Bush was one of the most disgusting experiences in my life.

We got to do a few things with President Clinton. To be invited to Washington again to play with Ashanti and all those other cool people there in front of President Bush and the rest of the world feels awesome. I'm really looking forward to going.

Bush is going in the wrong way. And I dare say, that is what the strategy of his administration is, is just to wipe out government's purpose for any social and economic justice at all. And I'm going to take the country in an opposite direction than he's taking it.

Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'

The first year of the Bush administration we used up all of the surplus and ended up just with the Social Security and Medicare surplus, and each year worse than the year before.

The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.

We're half an hour from Toronto, which offers everything you could want from a city, and a couple of hours from beautiful vacation country. We have it all here, plus George W. Bush is not our president.

I think the Bush Administration had basically inherited a policy toward Iraq from the Reagan/Bush Administration that saw Iraq as a kind of fire wall against Iranian fundamentalism. And as it developed over the 1980s, it became a real political run-a-muck... even though the Iraqis were known to be harboring Palestinian terrorists.

We not only heard it before 20 years ago, before George Bush in 2001 passed his tax relief, before in 2003 the tax relief were past, we were told they were dead. Before we provided prescription drugs for Medicare, we were told it wasn't going to happen.

We expect President Bush to implement his own vision of a two-state solution, the birth of the Palestinian State and the ending of the occupation that started in 1967.

So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency.

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country.

My healthcare plan puts more money into average families' pockets than the Bush tax cuts... He's got a lousy tax cut. It's only good for the super wealthy. I've got a tax cut that will help ordinary people.

A president aiming for 'Great' or 'Near Great' status must do more. He must give lots of interviews, make records accessible, and heap the flattery on academia - each of which Mr. Bush has signally failed to do.

Lacey said if he wanted to read a daily or regular critiques of the Bush administration, he would read the New York Times, and that's not what he wanted in the Village Voice.

My grandmother had a lilac bush at her home in Long Island. I always associate the scent of it with her and try to have lilacs in my home.

The war in Iraq will end, our troops will come home, Bush will be impeached and he will be brought to justice.

The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears U.S. government defenders referring to 'terrorists' when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism.

Tonight, I concurred with President Bush when he stated that the decisions on future involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq should be left to the Pentagon and not politicians in Washington.

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry.

They plan to ride into the White House on the Sweet Talk Express. Well, think again. Bush and Cheney are not compassionate conservatives. They are ruthless reactionaries.

The United States treated Gaddafi as an enemy due to his support for terrorism against us, until a rapprochement of sorts began under Pres. George W. Bush at the very end of 2003.

Most Americans have little idea of how far our nation's worldwide standing had fallen by the end of the Bush administration; no matter how bad you thought it had gotten, it was worse.

It's really changed me. For the first time I'm in favor of the Bush tax cuts.

Under the Bush plan, Social Security gets weaker, not stronger.

We had prepared, my staff had prepared for me a whole dossier on virtually - on George Bush on his votes on his records, what he had done over the past number of years in public service.

George W Bush is like a bad comic working the crowd, a moron, if you'll pardon the expression.

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation.

I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.

I think Tony Blair has to come down on one side or the other. You can't be a half-hearted supporter of the possible attack on Iraq. You're either with George Bush or you're against him.

After getting driven into the ground by the policies of the Bush administration, the economy is creeping up. It's doing that because people are sticking their shoulders to the wheel. Community banks are doing a lot of lending to small businesses and keeping them going.

The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the precious possession he brought with him from home was his personal feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. He was famously unavailable for debate and dialogue. He was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and always got a good night's sleep.

The true test of whether Mr. Obama has improved on the Bush era lies in how his administration justifies its decisions on the 241 remaining Guantanamo detainees, whose cases will now be evaluated internally and reviewed by the courts.

There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration's foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.

President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution. Then he raised taxes and in '92 ran as an establishment moderate - same candidate, two very different campaigns.

Well, let me tell you, any conservative that's unhappy with George Bush warms my heart, in any way that they can wake up and smell the coffee would be really great.

Obama and the Democrats were so critical of what Bush did, the interrogations, the secret prisons, Guantanamo and all of that, and even the war on terror. Obama won't use the word. He's made war on the war on terror.