22 Quotes by Bert Lance

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Go out on the front porch of the house, turn the Washington Post over with your big toe, and if your name’s above the fold, you know you’re not going to have a good day.

I don't see I'll ever arrive at the point where I'll say, 'Lance old boy, you've arrived at success.' There's no question about it. Once you get to the point where you've arrived at a station called success, you get complacent and lethargic. Those goals you set keep changing. But it's not a ruthless sort of thing.

Folks are serious about three things: Their religion, their family and, most of all, their money.

I guess it is ironical that I have a chance to say to Jesse Jackson, 'You need to be mature. You need to be positive. You need to be bigger than the folks who are trying to tear you down.'

I'm a futures man.

I did not want to be a source of diversion from the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. It appears no matter what I did or tried to do, that would not be the case. I came to the conclusion that it was in the best interest of all to stand aside.

I devised the Bert Lance Toe Test then - you go out on the front porch of the house, turn 'The Washington Post' over with your big toe, and if your name's above the fold, you know you're not going to have a good day.

In politics, they don't want anything that deters whatever their goal is. When people get in the way of that, that's when people get hurt - and sometimes destroyed.