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SmartQuotes
@betterpresidents.bsky.social
Inspirational presidential quotes… how presidents used to speak.
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
December 15, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Though political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they can also become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government…

George Washington
Farewell address
September 9, 2025 at 4:23 PM
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

Lyndon B. Johnson
September 7, 2025 at 7:41 PM
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Inaugural Address, Washington, DC, 1/20/53
July 26, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
He was known as "Give 'em Hell Harry" He did too.. #history #socialism
June 25, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
He didn't send the National Guard when this happened.
June 8, 2025 at 8:36 PM
To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fireside chat
April 14, 1938
June 8, 2025 at 5:44 PM
There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.

Warren G. Harding
May 14, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
“No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State"

- Article I, Section 9, U.S. Constitution
May 11, 2025 at 5:04 PM
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.

James Madison

November 22, 1787
May 3, 2025 at 3:40 PM
The Nazi danger to our Western world has long ceased to be a mere possibility. The danger is here now--not only from a military enemy but from an enemy of all law, all liberty, all morality, all religion.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Fireside chat, September 11, 1941
May 3, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
Socialism is what they called public power. 

Socialism is what they called social security. 
 
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
 
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

—Harry Truman, 1952
May 1, 2025 at 9:31 PM
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.

Abraham Lincoln
April 29, 2025 at 11:35 PM
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.

Ronald Reagan
April 29, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams
April 29, 2025 at 9:26 PM
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

March 6, 1956
April 26, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

~ Theodore Roosevelt ~
April 23, 2025 at 12:51 PM
We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions-bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

November 1, 1940
April 19, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
April 19, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by SmartQuotes
If you’re changing the definition of human rights, it means you plan on violating people’s human rights.
April 18, 2025 at 3:36 PM
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.

John Adams
April 18, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
April 15, 2025 at 5:57 PM
As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.

Ulysses S. Grant

1878
April 13, 2025 at 1:25 AM
If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done.

Thomas Jefferson
April 9, 2025 at 11:39 PM
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Abraham Lincoln
April 7, 2025 at 1:58 PM