Hamilton Jordan Quotes

I went to my son's graduation this weekend, and I heard a great quote I've never heard before from Albert Einstein. It was that the greatest danger to the world is not the bad people but it's the good people who don't speak out.

If you think the system - not you - but if your viewers think that the current political system is working well and serving the interest of our country, then what we're doing will not be attractive.

The battle in American politics used to be for the middle. Now, it's all about the building and the intensity of support on the far left and far right wings of both parties. And we have forgotten about the people here in the middle.

You mentioned Ross Perot. Mr. Perot jumped into the race at the last minute, had one issue that he ran on, the budget deficit, was in and out of the race a couple of times, and still got 20 million votes, didn't have the Internet.

If your doctor tells you you have a rare disease that he or she has never seen, if you've got an incurable cancer, boy, don't accept that. You know, go and get a second opinion.

It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it.

If, after the election, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and a Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I'd quit.

I was in Vietnam, and I was exposed to Agent Orange. And there's a high relationship between people that were exposed to Agent Orange and the kind of lymphoma that I had. The prostate cancer was genetic in my family. My father had prostate cancer, my - three of my four uncles had prostate cancer.

Sometimes at night, when I leave and ride by the front of the White House and the lights are on, it is so beautiful, I have some sense of, 'Hey, that's where I work, and Jimmy is President now.' But day in and day out, it's a job.

And when you start talking about the practicality of winning a race like that - you've got to remember we're not talking about winning 51 percent of the vote. We're talking about winning 36, 37, 38 percent of the vote.

We have the American people properly concerned about the future of our country and the world.

I know a lot of people that had one cancer that are not alive today. I've had three. So my glass is much more than half full.

The difference today is that, in both parties, the very extreme elements control the nomination process.

I think the system is broken; most people think that it's broken. And we think that what we're going to do is invigorate the political system and allow for this country to be turned around.

I didn't work for Jimmy Carter all those years to go to cocktail parties. I was there as a political adviser, a short-order cook, to work on topical matters.

And a tiny number of people in a few states make these decisions, and we're left with these options that are increasingly not attractive to the American people.