Memoirists From The United States

"That's accurate."

"This relationship is built on trust, and you know very well that I have worked hard to earn the trust of the people in this room, and I think I've earned it -- and I think I've earned it with the American people."

"Isn't it my right to talk and say what I want to?"

"The President is a very straightforward and plainspoken person, and I'm someone who believes in dealing in a very straightforward way with you all, as well, and that's what I've worked to do."

"I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended. [...] I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings."

"Well, I indicated yesterday that I think there were some -- a few staff-level meetings. But, no, I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon."

"Jeff Gannon: Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were "well-founded." Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure? Scott McClellan: Well, one, let me point out that I think those reports speak for themselves on that issue. And I think if you have questions about that, you can direct that to Mr. Wilson."

"Jeff Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like "sickening," "disgusting" and "reprehensible." Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images? Scott McClellan: I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often."

"Q: But if you stand out strongly trying to let the Arab world know that this is wrong and then you have the proverbial spokesperson for the conservative party saying this, doesn't that send a mixed message? Scott McClellan: The President's views have been very -- have been made very clear. Go ahead."

"Jeff Gannon: Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting? What was he doing after he was honorably discharged? Scott McClellan: We've already commented on some of his views relating back to that period the other day."

"If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

"I think it tells the truth and it cuts to the heart of so many profound aspects of human experience unlike many musicals, which cover more frivolous topics."

"I do prefer men. I’ve always been very open about that. I don’t really care anymore about labels, per se, but I think it’s interesting to talk about the whole spectrum of the experiences. I think for some people, when they think that public figures say something like what I said, they’re trying to obfuscate or hide. I wasn’t trying to do that — I was trying to have an open conversation about the nature of sexuality, and that there’s a fluidity to it to some degree in some cases. I’ve always liked the word “queer,” because it’s an umbrella word that covers all of it. I also like the fact that “queer” was reclaimed from being an epithet to being a word that’s empowering."

"I for one welcome being replaced."

"A black friend of morbid wit said to me, ‘Doesn't O.J. know that we can f*** 'em now but we still can't kill 'em?’ . . ."

"I knew that the stories of the two murders would immediately grab the glands of millions of American white men, prejudicing them in ways they would never admit publicly. . . . (It) would enliven the insecurities of millions of white male psyches. The old college girl's chant, “Once you go black you never go back!” surely would take on feverish new meaning."

"(T)he upsurge of violent racism in armed groups in America involves more than the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. It now includes every police force in any city and county in America, the National Guard, federal agencies, and even some private ‘protective’ groups."

"probably 95 percent of ‘white’ Americans have some ‘Negroid blood.’"

"The Federal courts . . . surrendered to racist mob psychology as cravenly as any law officer ever did in the Reconstruction South under pressure from a lynch mob. Suddenly, mass bigotry was more dominant in the so called halls of justice in 1995 than it had been in 1955."

"(If America abandons affirmative action, the country will take a giant step towards race war because there are) armies of raging blacks and furious Hispanics who would go ballistic over effectuation of the proposed campaigns to roll back the meager gains that nonwhites have made in America during a cruel century."

"(the effort to abolish affirmative action) is led mostly by conscienceless politicians, publicity-seeking bigots, whites with individual gripes who find it easy to make trouble in a litigious society, and a handful of blacks who harbor doubts about their own intellectual merits."

"for every Farrakhan who riles and poisons black America, there are twenty white bigots who seek to take us into organized murder and mayhem."

"(Ronald Reagan is) the President who is more responsible than any for the fact that white racism is both tolerated and even fashionable again in America."

"A lot of the blood of America's race war victims will be on the hands and bloated bodies of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern."

"Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America."

"Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court."

"You don't really talk about it in terms of the U.N., you talk about it in terms of the United States and the Soviet Union. If you cannot, by diplomacy, bring the Soviet Union into an alliance with the U.S. to stop this situation it is not going to be stopped."

"Clarence Thomas is the best only at his ability to bootlick for Ronald Reagan and George Bush... They didn't pick him because he was black. They picked him because he's a black conservative. And the thing that bothers me about his appointment -- if they had put David Duke on, I wouldn't scream as much because they would look at David Duke and reject him for what he is. If you gave Clarence Thomas a little flour on his face, you'd think you had David Duke talking."

"Our country is wallowing in a miasma of political and class conflict, of greed and special interest, with regard to budget deficits, inflation and rising unemployment, the threats of both a bloody war and a devastating recession. How did we get into this mess? Because the press, during the 1980s committed one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. The media took a dive, caved in, and did not tell the American people the price they would eventually pay for Reaganomics."

"We must reverse this psychology (of needing guns for home defense). We can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail- period!"

"David Brinkley: Suppose somebody was breaking into your house at night, and you didn't have a gun. Wouldn't you wish you had one? Sam Donaldson: No, I'd call the police immediately, I'd slam the doors, I'd cower under the bed, or in the closet... Brinkley: George? George Will: I'd call Carl Rowan."

"[President Nixon], in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power."

"Black people would in private say that Nicole was ‘white trash,’ using her blond hair, her big breasts, her teenage pussy to woo a famous, rich, middle-aged black man away from the black woman who had sustained and nurtured him through the toughest years of his life."

"But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him (her husband, former president George H. W. Bush) suffer?"

"The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions.... You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you’re not going to change each other’s minds. It’s a waste of your time and my time."

"I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich."

"Dear First Lady: I recently read your criticism of my family. I was deeply hurt. Heaven knows we're far from perfect and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee bit short of normal; but as Dr. Seuss says, "a person is a person". I try to teach my children Bart, Lisa, and even little Maggie, always to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them, even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to understand this advice when the very First Lady in the country calls us not only dumb, but "the dumbest thing" she ever saw. Ma'am, if we're the dumbest thing you ever saw, Washington must be a good deal different than what they teach me at the current events group at the church. I always believed in my heart that we had a great deal in common. Each of us living our lives to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some way out of this controversy. I thought, perhaps, it would be a good start to just speak my mind."

"For heaven's sake enjoy life. Don't cry over things that were or things that aren't. Enjoy what you have now to the fullest. In all honesty you really only have two choices; you can like what you do OR you can dislike it. I choose to like it and what fun I have had. The other choice is no fun and people do not want to be around a whiner. We can always find people who are worse off and we don't have to look far! Help them and forget self! I would certainly say, above all, seek God. He will come to you if you look. There is absolutely NO down side."

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they [the Hurricane Katrina refugees in the Houston Astrodome] all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

"Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you."

"As far as I know from personal experience and talking to other vets, particularly since 9/11, recruiters promise all kinds of benefits and promise young people that they won’t have to go to war at all. That’s what Casey’s recruiter told him in 2000. “Tell your mom, even if there is a war, you won’t see combat, because you are such a high-value recruit.” Casey was killed in combat a few days after arriving in Iraq."

"Cindy Sheehan has become the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. She's tired, fed up and she's not going to take it anymore, and so now we stand with her."

"I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous."

"As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist."

"As a child of the Cold War, my experience with Cuba and its lovely people, has done more than almost anything, except Casey’s murder, to highlight the treachery and viciousness of the U.S. Empire that killed Casey and has oppressed, or killed millions more over the years."

"I still get my fair share of hate messages. But the messages from people who outright apologize to me for “hating” me and who tell me they have since changed their minds outnumber those."

"What can a president say, “Sorry your loved one was killed so the U.S. could make sure that we had complete control over all of (fill in the blank name of country)’s natural resources and so that Boeing, Halliburton, and Raytheon could have massive profits?” Better that the barbarism of wars for profit ends."

"War is barbaric. Trump has proven himself to be a loose cannon who doesn’t seem to have very many social graces. But Bush was no better. I wish the conversation was about the barbarism of war... Where is the movement to oppose U.S. wars, instead of liberal handwringing over botched messages of condolence?"

"Many U.S. troops occupy countries that are no threat to the U.S. and many innocent civilians have been killed. I don’t find that heroic at all. But most “grunts” are from poor, working-class.... So they believe the recruiters and join the military. I see most of the U.S. military as victims, not heroes. Of course, no one statement covers everything adequately."

"Presidents are humans, too… it is really awkward to be with parents who have buried a child. There isn’t really anything anyone can say that isn’t somewhat hurtful. However, since I publicly opposed the wars and U.S. empire, I have heard, “He knew what he was signing up for,” many times. It’s simply not true, like I said before."