Warren G. Harding Quotations

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

I don't know much about Americanism, but it's a damn good word with which to carry an election.

I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!

I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it.

I continued with whatever 'qualified climbers' I could con into this rather unpromising venture.

That's good. Go on, read some more.

There is no relationship here between Church and State. Religious liberty has its unalterable place, along with civil and human liberty, in the very foundation of the Republic. I hold it [religious intolerance] to be a menace to the very liberties which we boast and cherish.

Actually, we're just glorified flagpole sitters.

I hate climbers like Royal Robbins who are so superior. He doesn’t mean to be, he just is. He’s methodic, scientific, capable, and so competent it makes me envious. I was climbing with some hotshot Brit in Yosemite once, and he said, ‘My God, Harding, you can’t do anything!’ I said, ‘I know, but I can do it forever.’

I was spent up. I sure grabbed that girl of mine.

My once-keen analytical mind has become so dulled by endless hours of baking in the hot sun, thrashing about in tight chimneys, pulling at impossibly heavy loads, freezing my ass off.... so that now my mental state is comparable to that of a Peruvian Indian, well stoked on coca leaves...

As I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was.

He liked to play chess and do intelligent things, and I was a serious drinker and nonthinker.

I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was,

The president is the cuticle of the nail bed of America: one would think pushing back makes him stronger, yet it turns out the opposite is true.

Screwing is more enjoyable than drilling bolt holes !.

In the experiences of a year of the Presidency, there has come to me no other such unwelcome impression as the manifest religious intolerance which exists among many of our citizens. I hold it to be a menace to the very liberties we boast and cherish.

I couldn't catch a ball or any of that stuff. I could do only what required brute stupidity.

There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.

I hurt with the insatiate longing, until I feel that there will never be any relief until I take a long, deep, wild draught on your lips.

We must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature.

I expect it is very possible that I would make as good a President as a great many men who are talked of for that position.

I knew that this job would be too much for me.

Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. ... I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by US Marines.

Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.

There's good in everybody. Boost. Don't knock.

I have been thinking a lot about these things as I have come to the realization of the tremendous responsibilities which rest upon me. It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God. I am bound to believe that in a tumultuous age like ours the most important and imperative duty is the reconstruction of humanity to Almighty God.

The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man.

Ambition is a commendable attribute, without which no man succeeds. Only inconsiderate ambition imperils.

Less government in business and more business in government.

The success of our popular government rests wholly upon the correct interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable popular will of America.

Treat your friend as if he will one day be your enemy, and your enemy as if he will one day be your friend

It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God.

I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.

Every student has the ability to be a successful learner,

It is impossible for one who has studied at all the services of the Hebrew people to avoid the faith that they will one day be restored to their historic national home and there enter on a new and yet greater phase of their contribution to the advance of humanity.

We need citizens who are less concerned about what their government can do for them, and more concerned about what they can do for the nation.