President’s Day is just around the corner. Quite the underrated holiday if you ask me – it provides us the first three-day weekend of the year! But let’s not forget a primary purpose of this nation’s holiday: to celebrate and honor the leaders of our nation. And with this in mind, I provide below a table of my favorite presidential quotes. Most are related to virtues such as honesty, hard work, integrity, and leadership. There are a few presidents missing from the list. Do you know who they are?
- George Washington: I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
- John Adams: If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
- Thomas Jefferson: I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
- John Quincy Adams: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
- Andrew Jackson: I’ve got big shoes to fill. This is my chance to do something. I have to seize the moment.
- Martin Van Buren: The government should not be guided by Temporary Excitement, but by Sober Second Thought.
- James Buchanan: The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
- Abraham Lincoln: Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
- Ulysses S. Grant: My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.
- Rutherford B. Hayes: The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.
- James A. Garfield: Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
- Benjamin Harrison: Great lives never go out; they go on.
- Grover Cleveland: Honor lies in honest toil.
- William McKinley: In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.
- Theodore Roosevelt: Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
- Calvin Coolidge: All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.
- Herbert Hoover: Children are our most valuable natural resource.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
- Harry S. Truman: Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
- John F. Kennedy: Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- Lyndon B. Johnson: There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.
- Richard Nixon: A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.
- Gerald Ford: History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.
- Jimmy Carter: You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.
- Ronald Reagan: There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.
- George H. W. Bush: We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.
- Bill Clinton: Let us all take more responsibility, not only for ourselves and our families but for our communities and our country.
- George W. Bush: Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.
- Barack Obama: Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
