when Leaders don't think

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to
comply with the law." - David Dinkins, New York City
Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his
taxes.

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the
lowest crime rates in the country."
- Former Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through
our papers. We are the president."- Hillary Clinton
commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death
by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it."
- A congressional candidate in Texas

"It's like changing the rules in the middle of the stream."
- Rev. Jesse Jackson

"If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter
will be cut right out from under your feet."
- Former British foreign minister Ernest Bevin

"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up
to real money." - Everett Dirksen one-time US Senator

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of
which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Dirksen

"I am honored today to begin my first term as the
Governorof Baltimore - that is Maryland."
- William Donald Schaefer, first inaugural address

Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the
manhood to apologize."
Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up
against his any time."

"I'm not against the blacks and a lot of the good blacks
will attest to that."
- Evan Mecham, then governor of Arizona

"Nixon has been sitting in the White House while George
McGovern has been exposing himself to the people of the
United States."- Frank Licht, then governor of Rhode
Island, campaigning for McGovern in 1972

"That’s a part of American greatness, is discrimination.
Yes, sir. Inequality, I think breeds freedom and gives a
man opportunity."- Lester Maddox, ex-governor of Georgia

"Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity
of human life." -Utah Senator Orrin Hatch (R), on the death
penalty

"While you are away, movie stars are taking your women.
Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend. Tom Selleck is
kissing your lady. Bart Simpson is making love to your wife."
- Baghdad Betty, Iraqi radio announcer, to Gulf War troops

"We do no have censorship. What we have is a limitation on
what newspapers can report."- Louis Nel, former Deputy
Minister of Information for South Africa

"The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They
just meant to rape."
- Joyce Kithira, deputy principal of a
Kenyan boarding school, commenting on a raid of a girls’
dormitory by a gang of boys who raped 71 girls and killed 19.

"I forgot no one was working. Everyone had Buckwheat’s
birthday off."
- Town commissioner of Mardela Springs, MD,
commenting on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and the
difficulty he had in getting in touch with county employees.

"Booker T. Washington, the great black nigger...uh...educator
...uh... excuse me for making that...the great black educator...
the Negro educator."
- Reagan Brown, Texas agriculture commissioner

"If Governor Fields is right, I am going to stand by him
because he is right. If he is wrong, I am going to stand by
him because he is a Democrat."
- Senator Augustus Owsley Stanley (D-Ken.) in the ‘20’s

"Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone
found doing so will be prosecuted."
- A railroad station sign

"A gun is a recreational tool, like a golf club or a tennis
racket. You can kill someone with a golf club, you know."
- Martel Lovelace, NRA official

"He’s trying to take the decision out of the hand of twelve
honest men and give it to 435 Congressmen!"
- Rep. Charles Vanil of Ohio, on Spiro Agnew’s request to
have his case tried by the house, instead of a court.

"Making love is a mental illness that wastes time and energy."
- Peoples’s Republic of China, Official Communist Party
proclamation.

"We’re going to have to wrestle to the ground this giant
orgasm that is just out of control."
- Arizona senator Dennis DeConcini on a balanced budget
amendment.

"I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too
important to be left to the voluntary action of the market
place."- Congressman Richard Kelly (R-Florida)

"I am ignorant of the Government’s reasons, but I
disapprove of them."
- James C. Percy, citing an English member of Parliament
during a heated parliamentary debate circa 1910.

"This is the best biography by me that I have ever read."
- Lawrence Welk, looking at his book.

"The President doesn’t want any yes-men and yes
-women around him. When he says no, we all say no."
- Elizabeth Dole, then assistant/Public Liaison to
President Reagan, later Secretary of Labor under Bush

"Until you’ve lived through a White House Easter Egg Hunt,
you don’t know what hell is."
- Merrie Spaeth, former aide to Nancy Reagan, on the
duties facing Hillary Clinton

"Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you,
make damn sure they heard you."
- Barbara Bush, advising Hillary Clinton about the media

"That’s the President of the United States you’re talking
about, pinhead."- VP Al Gore, to David Letterman, after
a joke about Clinton’s fast food habits

"Maybe I was spoiled by your predecessor, but as a
taxpayer and as a man who tells jokes for a living, I’m
not sure I’m getting my money’s worth out of you."
- David Letterman, to Al Gore
 
"I appreciate Representative Frank trying to enhance my
dull image, but in terms of obsession with sex, I’m not in
Barney’s league."
- Sen. Sam Nunn, responding to Frank’s
charge that the senator is ‘obsessed with sex and involved
in an anti-gay witch hunt'

"I let him live on a farm. I guess he learned naturally
from the animals that were around."
- Televangelist Pat Robertson, who opposes sex ed in
schools, on his son Tim’s introduction to the facts of life.

Quote of the picture
"i think therefore i am" -unknown