You know, I hate to tell you — I don’t want to hurt your feelings — but I was asleep. – November 19, 2010 “Tonight Show” in reply to Jay Leno’s “Thanks for all the material”

I don’t think it’s good for the country to have a former president criticizing his successor. – November 19, 2010 “Tonight Show” in reply to Jay Leno’s questions to why he’s not spoken out about President Obama’s tenure or policies.

I believe it’s impossible to reach definitive conclusions about my presidency or any recent presidency for that matter for several decades. – interview with Matt Lauer on November 3, 2010 “Today” promoting Bush’s book “Decision Points”

But the main purpose of the book is to have a starting point, not a starting point, a data point for future historians. This may seem strange to you, I really don’t care about perceptions at this point in time. I served, I gave it my all and I’m a content man. – interview with Matt Lauer on November 3, 2010 “Today” promoting Bush’s book “Decision Points”

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I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system. – December 2008
We want our Border Patrol agents chasing, you know, crooks and thieves and drug-runners and terrorists, not good-hearted people who are coming here to work. And therefore, it makes sense to allow the good-hearted people who are coming here to do jobs that Americans won’t do a legal way to do so. And providing that legal avenue, it takes the pressure off the border.” — Bush explains that we don’t want the Border Patrol to actually stop illegal aliens

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. – August 5, 2004

If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator. – December 19, 2000

I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office. – Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace. – June 18, 2002

There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on –shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again. – Nashville, Tenn., September 17, 2002

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. -  Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it…I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn’t yet…I don’t want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one. — after being asked to name the biggest mistake he had made, Washington, D.C., April 3, 2004

Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. – to FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, Mobile, Ala., September 2, 2005

Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country. – September 6, 2004

You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. – to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, February 4, 2005

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. – speaking underneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003

The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him. – September 13, 2001

I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority. – March 13, 2002

So what? – President Bush, responding to a an ABC News correspondent who pointed out that Al Qaeda wasn’t a threat in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded, December 14, 2008

We have to fix it or Rumsfeld may never retire. – 2005, on Social Security, at the 2005 Gridiron Dinner

I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible? – President Bush, in a note to to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting, September 14, 2005

I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn’t work. – Bush after being thwarted by locked doors when he tried to exit a news conference in Beijing in the face of hostile questioning from reporters, November 20, 2005

You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. – Bush, to a divorced mother of three in Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

What didn’t go right? – Bush, as quoted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, after she urged him to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown “because of all that went wrong, of all that didn’t go right” in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, September 6, 2005

Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. – Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, September 2, 2005

When he woke up he was surrounded by loved ones — his wife, his daughter and … “my dad.” – Bush, on former President Clinton’s recuperation from surgery

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