Dick Cheney Quotes

One of the reasons the deficit got as big as it did, frankly, was because of the economic slowdown, the fall-off in deficits, the terrorist attacks. A significant chunk was taken out of the economy by what happened after the attacks of 9/11.

Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well.

Cheney, Cheney, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide.

It's not just Bin Laden or just those that are involved in the counterterrorism effort. We've gotta cast the net broader than that. But I think it's a - very special tribute that we all owe to the bravery and courage of the men and women in the intelligence and military business who performed so well to finally get it done.

You cannot be driven by the polls. The polls change all the time; they're easily manipulated by whoever wants to ask those poll questions; they go up; they go down.

People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them: How do you think I got the job?

We must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary.

The only thing left that shows I was a heart patient is I have a scar down the middle of my chest where they went in three times to do open heart surgery. I have a brand new heart inside, and all the mechanical and electronic gear and so forth is all gone.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

Like many Americans, I've always been intrigued by Bill Clinton. I obviously didn't always agree with him - enjoyed running against his legacy in 2000, when Al Gore was his designated successor, but I don't have anything negative I would say about Bill Clinton.

I worked for George Bush. I'm proud to have worked for him. I think that a lot of the most controversial things we did, that people didn't like and - and criticized us for, things like the terror surveillance program or the enhanced interrogation techniques, were things that allowed us to save lives.

I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.

We do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power.

I'm often asked why I left politics and went to Halliburton and I explain that I reached the point where I was mean-spirited, short-tempered and intolerant of those who disagreed with me and they said 'Hell, you'd make a great CEO', so I went to Texas and joined the private sector.

I - obviously, I'm not a big fan of President Obama. I think he's been one of our weakest presidents. I just fundamentally disagree with him philosophically.

There's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government

I think the key that happened on 9/11 is we went from considering terrorist attacks as a law enforcement problem to considering terrorist attacks, especially on the scale we have on 9/11, as being an act of war.

You got to have people at the top who respond to and are selected by presidents.

We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

You really do think about it institutionally; this is your job, and to some extent you benefit from having a job to do at a moment like this. You have things that you have to make happen. And you don't have time for the emotional reaction that might otherwise occur if somebody was just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities.

The Columbia is lost, but the dreams that inspired its crew remain with us.

It's a tougher program for tougher customers.

I support the President's plan to amend the Constitution, banning same-sex marriage.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies ... That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

I can think of a lot of words to describe Senator Kerry's position on Iraq; 'consistent' is not one of them.

[Saddam Hussein is aggressively seeking nuclear and biological weapons and ] the United States may well become the target.

I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.

The issue is that [Saddam] has chemical weapons.

Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose.

It used to be you needed to have a very large sophisticated state before you could even have a nuclear weapon ... Now the technology is widespread enough. It doesn't take very many people to be able to cobble together a devastating attack, and all it takes is one.

You know, I've got experiences going back to the wage price controls in the Nixon administration where, in effect, we had what I think was a terrible mistake, in that case a Republican administration, where moved in and tried to control the wages, prices and profits of every enterprise in America. It was a huge mistake.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

It's awfully hard to convey a sense of credibility to allies when you [the Congress] voted for the war and then you declared: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.

If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years ... we would not have had the kind of job growth we've had.

The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role.

I think that freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay, and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish.

I think freedom means freedom for everybody,

In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate - and fortunately on matters of national security he was very often in the minority.

From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we're engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.

The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people. I mean, these are terrorists for the most part.

One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.

If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.

I want to avoid personal attacks, ... I promise not to make fun of your singing.

When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,

I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any.

I believe that we were not as effective in the second term dealing with this issue of nuclear none proliferation as we had been during the first term when we stripped Libya and Iraq and A.Q. Khan and their capacity to proliferate nuclear technology.

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,

I was convinced that eventually I would die of heart disease, that we'd run out of time and out of treatment, the technology wouldn't keep ahead of my disease. And now all of the sudden, when you get the new heart, your life opens up before you again.

I am a deficit hawk.

Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual - America sees two John Kerrys.

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public ... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant.

Reagan proved deficits don't matter.

I feel very strongly that the significance of 9/11 cannot be underestimated. It forces us to think in new ways about strategy, about national security, about how we structure our forces and about how we use U.S. military power.

In our own country, we take democratic values seriously - and so we always have a vigorous debate on the issues. That's part of the greatness of America, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.

I wake up every morning literally with a smile on my face, grateful for another day I never thought I'd see.

My own personal view is that people ought to have the right to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. With respect to how that's affected or regulated by the State, those are State decisions. Different States are likely to make different decisions based upon their own wishes and desire of the people of the State, and that's perfectly acceptable.

When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around.

President Bush gave me a tremendous opportunity to serve as the vice president. I enjoyed very much having the opportunity to be a part of his team. He told me at the outset, he wanted me to sign on to be a part of his team - and he was true to his word, kept it. He was tough. He was decisive. He was also a pretty good politician.

Unfortunately, we don't have the option of marriage in our country. We could go to Britain or Spain or Argentina and do something symbolic, but that's not what I want. I want to have the rights of anybody else in my home country. I don't want to be a second-class citizen

I reached a point towards the end on the old heart where I had trouble getting out of a chair. All I wanted to do was get out of bed in the morning and walk to my office and sit back down in the chair. Now I throw 50 pound bags of horse feed in the back of my pickup truck and I don't even think about it. I'm back doing those things.

I'm not apologetic with respect to the policies of the Bush administration. I think we basically got it right.

I think the record speaks for itself. These are two individuals who have been for the war when the headlines were good and against it when their poll ratings were bad.

Two days ahead of schedule, the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraq.

I have not seen Al Gore's movie.

I've worked for four presidents and watched two others up close, and I know that there's no such thing as a routine day in the Oval Office.

After 9/11, it became clear that we [the United States] had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists wherever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.

We've had experiences where the president's been shot, but never had a situation where the vice president shot somebody.

We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard ... Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to kill four million Americans, ... For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won't be hit again ...

I think it's fair to say you can't predict a straight line to victory. You know, there'll be good days and bad days along the way.

Except for the occasional heart attack, I never felt better.

I think you can not be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

As a former secretary of defense, I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had.

Westerners know the difference between a talker and the real deal. If Rick Perry wasn't right to be governor of Texas, why should he be president?

I got sick, hospitalized, had no insurance. And the money I had saved for our honeymoon went to pay medical bills. So I had been in the position of not having insurance when I needed health care.

You know, in this business, you don't have any control over what the press says and how they portray things. And that's their prerogative. But I think anybody who looks at it objectively has trouble making the case that somehow this is a bad economy.

One of the worst things we could do is start to act now as though the attack of 9/11 is a thing of the past and will never be repeated. That's just not true.

I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I also believe that gay and lesbians and gay and lesbian couples, those who have been in long-term relationships, deserve to be treated respectfully, they deserve to have benefits.

Europeans know that their great experiment in building peace, unity and prosperity cannot survive as a privileged enclave, surrounded on its outskirts by breeding grounds of hatred and fanaticism.

That's the nature of the intelligence business. You have to work with what you can get your hands on, but it is.. and in fact it's more an art form than it is a science, and you have to continually work the problem, continually try..

I think, in fact, the situation with respect to Al Qaida to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong. I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind, and I think Al Qaida is out there even as we meet trying to figure out how to do that.

America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction." ... "We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction ... We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems ballistic missiles that had been prohibited by the United Nations.

I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.

And the fact of the matter is there were thousands of people that went through those training camps in Afghanistan. We know they are seeking deadlier weapons - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons if they can get it.

A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues.

The Iraqi forces are conducting the Mother of all Retreats.

Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States.

No matter what kind of problem I've run into, there's always been a solution for it. Now, obviously, there will be a point where there aren't any more solutions, and I'll have used up my time. We all do.

I don't think that [the war in Iraq] damaged our reputation around the world.

His regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists.

The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.

We need to have a pro-growth policy put in place that offers people hope and offers the opportunity for businesses to expand and for them to have confidence in what the world is going to look like for the next two or three or four years with respect to economic policy.

"Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

I think I was able to survive five heart attacks because I never postponed going to the hospital when something didn't feel right.

To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger ... It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe ... The terrorists see just what they were hoping for: our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

The bottom line is that we've had enormous successes (in Iraq) and we will continue to have enormous successes.

I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it.

No, I've always been impressed with the tremendous resilience of the American economy. I think over the years, over the decades, it's demonstrated this tremendous ability to take severe body blows, if you will, and bounce back.

The Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security.