. . . Okay, Not All of Them

"No stranger can be here a day and converse with the proprietors without conceiving himself in the company of crazy people. Their delusions with respect to their own prospects are without parallel."

-- Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, upon arriving in Washington in 1800

"As the term of my relief from this place approaches, its drudgery becomes more nauseating and intolerable, and my impatience to be with you at Monticello increases daily."

-- Thomas Jefferson in an 1809 correspondence

"Nothing could be further from our desire than to return to Washington and again enter its whirl, either socially or politically."

-- Rutherford B. Hayes in an 1882 diary entry

"The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about."

-- Woodrow Wilson in a 1913 address in Philadelphia

"So I came to Washington, where I knew I would be farther away from America than I could be on some foreign shore; not that I do not respect this as a good part of America, but in its general routine the heart of America is felt less here than at any place I have ever been."

-- Sen. Huey Long (D-La.) in 1932 remarks to the Senate

"There were two things that had been unpleasant surprises. One was the inertia of Congress, the length of time it takes to get a complicated piece of legislation through . . . and the other was the irresponsibility of the press."

-- Jimmy Carter in a 1978 television interview