George W. Bush Quotes

I care what 51 percent of the people think about me.

The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into.

What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher.

This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You've got to preserve.

If you're a single mother with two children—which is the toughest job in America, as far as I'm concerned—you're working hard to put food on your family.

[R]arely is the question asked: Are... is our children learning?

If the terriers and barriffs are torn down, this economy will grow.

Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less–-the soft bigotry of low expectations.

America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused — preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.

We are no longer fighting a great enemy, we are asserting a great principle: that the talents and dreams of average people — their warm human hopes and loves — should be rewarded by freedom and protected by peace. We are defending the nobility of normal lives, lived in obedience to God and conscience, not to government.

The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.

Some have tried to pose a choice between American ideals and American interests — between who we are and how we act. But the choice is false. America, by decision and destiny, promotes political freedom — and gains the most when democracy advances. America believes in free markets and free trade — and benefits most when markets are opened. America is a peaceful power — and gains the greatest dividend from democratic stability. Precisely because we have no territorial objectives, our gains are not measured in the losses of others. They are counted in the conflicts we avert, the prosperity we share and the peace we extend.

American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.

The most powerful force in the world is not a weapon or a nation but a truth: that we are spiritual beings, and that freedom is "the soul's right to breathe."

In the defense of our nation, a president must be a clear-eyed realist. There are limits to the smiles and scowls of diplomacy. Armies and missiles are not stopped by stiff notes of condemnation. They are held in check by strength and purpose and the promise of swift punishment.