I'm proud that I'm a politician. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

Impromptu remarks before the Reciprocity Club, Washington, D.C. (11 April 1958)

https://books.google.com/books?id=2Tu3bScwKKAC&q=%...