Which president said anyone can be a president?

Answer 1

Andrew Johnson had the most humble background and the fewest advantages of any president. He had no family connections with any money or prestige. His father died when he was a baby and his mother had no money. He was apprenticed out to work while still a boy and was given no schooling at all. Furthermore he was from a slave state at a time when slavery was a fighting matter.

Kennedy was an Irish Catholic, a group that was widely disrespected at one time.

Obama was half black and the son of an alien -- both seemingly handicaps to a political career.

Answer 2

Actually, no president said this. A presidential candidate named Adlai Stevenson said, semi-jokingly in 1952 that "In America, any boy may become president; and I supposed that's just one of the risks he takes." There are various versions of this quote online. But as far as I know, none of the actual American presidents ever said anything similar to it, although several have remarked about never expecting to become president, or coming from humble beginnings and being able to ascend to the presidency (President Obama is one who has said something like this, referring to how only in America is such a story of social mobility possible).