Happy July 4th! To help us celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, below is some sage guidance from our current and former Presidents. Hope you find a few nuggets of inspiration.
George Washington “Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.”
John Adams “Liberty implies thought and choice and power.”
Thomas Jefferson “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
James Madison “What spectacle can be more edifying or seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning?”
James Monroe “A little flattery will support a man through great fatigue.”
John Quincy Adams “If your actions inspire others to dream, learn, do and become more, you are a leader.”
Andrew Jackson “There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.”
Martin Van Buren “No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration.”
William Harrison “I contend that the strongest of all governments is that which is most free.”
John Tyler “Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette.”
James Polk “No president who performs his duties faithfully can have any leisure.”
Zachary Taylor “It would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe.”
Millard Fillmore “It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.”
Franklin Pierce “If your past is limited, your future is boundless.”
James Buchanan “I like the noise of democracy.”
Abraham Lincoln “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
Andrew Johnson “It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.”
Ulysses S. Grant “My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.”
Rutherford B. Hayes “Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.”
James Garfield “If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.”
Chester A. Arthur A model civil servant has ” good sense, good habits, good temper…”
Grover Cleveland “It is better to be defeated standing for a principle than to run by committing subterfuge.”
Benjamin Harrison “The bud of victory is always in the truth.”
William McKinley “Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.”
Theodore Roosevelt “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
William Taft “The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions.”
Woodrow Wilson “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
Warren Harding “I have no trouble with my enemies…But my damn friends, they’re the ones who keep me [up].”
Calvin Coolidge “There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.”
Herbert Hoover “Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.”
Franklin Roosevelt “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
Harry Truman “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
Dwight Eisenhower “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.”
John F. Kennedy “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”
Lyndon Johnson “The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.”
Richard Nixon “You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.”
Gerald Ford “I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can remember.”
James Carter “Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.”
Ronald Reagan “There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.”
George H.W. Bush “We are not the sum of our possessions.”
William Clinton “Promising too much can be as cruel as caring too little.”
George W. Bush “One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.”
Barack Obama “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.”
