Quotes from Dick Cheney

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my faults.

Direct threats require decisive action.

I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.

My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . [in] weeks rather than months.

There's every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy.

You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play 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 got sick, hospitalized, had no insurance. And the money I had saved for our honeymoon went to pay medical bills. So I had been in the position of not having insurance when I needed health care.

I wake up every morning literally with a smile on my face, grateful for another day I never thought I'd see.

I got to be White House chief of staff, ten years of congressman, secretary of defense, vice-president. If you're a political junkie like I obviously am - that was - every one of those was just a tremendous experience. I'm very comfortable with what I did and why I did it and how I did it. And I'll let others judge whether they liked it or not.

I've been extraordinarily fortunate that I've been able to go live a very active, stressful life. And I don't believe that my heart disease changed me for the worst.

With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People...ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.