Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela -- what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president. It takes more than a single individual.
I heard somebody say, 'Where's (Nelson) Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead. Because Saddam killed all the Mandelas. --George W. Bush, on the former South African president, who is still very much alive, Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2007
Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
So I analyzed that and decided I didn't want to be the president during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression.
Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this.
If the only obstacle to the renewal and modernization of France is a choice of personnel, I am completely convinced that the president will make the right choice. What is at stake is not Alain Juppe but France.
We spend less time with each other now than we did during the presidency. When you're president, you're usually out and back in the same day - at least I was. I just came from a trip to the Middle East last week, where I was gone for five nights, and when I left, Laura [Bush] was out of town.
To announce there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand with the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.