Dick Cheney

“As I think about the future, I'm back where most people live their lives. Which is, death is not imminent, and that's different.”

“Except for the occasional heart attack, I never felt better.”

“We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.”

“We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed - something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States.”

“When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around.”

“I worked for George Bush. I'm proud to have worked for him. I think that a lot of the most controversial things we did, that people didn't like and - and criticized us for, things like the terror surveillance program or the enhanced interrogation techniques, were things that allowed us to save lives.”

“I reached a point towards the end on the old heart where I had trouble getting out of a chair. All I wanted to do was get out of bed in the morning and walk to my office and sit back down in the chair. Now I throw 50 pound bags of horse feed in the back of my pickup truck and I don't even think about it. I'm back doing those things.”

“It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.”

“In terms of asking questions, I plead guilty. I ask a hell of a lot of questions. That's my job.”

“Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

“We need to have a pro-growth policy put in place that offers people hope and offers the opportunity for businesses to expand and for them to have confidence in what the world is going to look like for the next two or three or four years with respect to economic policy.”

“Direct threats require decisive action.”

“We must be prepared to face our responsibilities and be willing to use force if necessary.”

“The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role.”

“From our perspective, trying to deal with this continuing campaign of terror, if you will, the war on terror that we're engaged in, this is a continuing enterprise. The people that were involved in some of those activities before 9/11 are still out there.”

“If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbours those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force.”

“I don't pay a lot of attention, frankly, to what Barack Obama says.”

“There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.”

“I'm not apologetic with respect to the policies of the Bush administration. I think we basically got it right.”

“The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.”