“I think people should elect a cat person. If you elect a dog person, you elect someone who wants to be loved. If you elect a cat person, you elect someone who wants to serve.”

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, November 20, 2004.

Barack Obama: &quot;Address to the Ghanaian Parliament in Accra, Ghana,&quot; July 11, 2009. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=86395&amp;st=&amp;st1= <br class="br">2009 <br class="br">Context: As I said in Cairo, each nation gives life to democracy in its own way and in line with its own traditions. But history offers a clear verdict: Governments that respect the will of their own people, that govern by consent, and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable, and more successful than governments that do not. This is about more than just holding elections; it&#x27;s also about what happens between elections. Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. And no country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. This—that is not democracy; that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end. In the 21st century, capable, reliable, and transparent institutions are the key to success: strong Parliaments; honest police forces; independent judges; an independent press; a vibrant private sector; a civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in people&#x27;s everyday lives.

2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018)

Rededication and restoration of Congress Hall http://books.google.com/books?id=w0IOAAAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA30&amp;dq=%22If+you+think+too+much%22, Philadelphia (25 October 1913) <br class="br">1910s

Quoted in &quot; &#x27;I have the skills for the job&#x27; - Helen Clark on bid for top UN job https://www.radiolive.co.nz/WATCH-I-have-the-skills-for-the-job---Helen-Clark-on-bid-for-top-UN-job/tabid/504/articleID/117913/Default.aspx&quot; (5 April 2016)

As quoted in An Honest President (2000) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 200.

Transcript of speech https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/11/donald-trump-unplugged-as-ever/ at Ambridge, Pennsylvania (October 10, 2016) <br class="br">2010s, 2016, October

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

This was quoted as an anonymous saying heard in Moscow around the time of the first Russian elections, in Voltaire, Goldberg & Others : A Compendium of the Witty, the Profound and the Absurd (2000), p. 201; it was later attributed to Brezhnev in Brewer's Famous Quotations: 5000 Quotations and the Stories Behind Them (2006) by Nigel Rees, p. 441, but without citations, and it is clearly derived from a statement widely attributed to Vyacheslav Molotov as early as the 1954 Berlin Conference, according to an eyewitness writing in International Affairs Vol. 36 (1960), p. 4 : "The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they are going to to turn out."
Misattributed