Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.

Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.

We need a president who will choose to do what’s best for the country, even when it doesn’t personally benefit them.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you’re dealt?

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

All leaders in the Lord’s Church are called by proper authority. No prophet or any other leader in this Church, for that matter, has ever called himself or herself. No prophet has ever been elected.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

You have to stay faithful to what you’re working on.

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

If I can be a leader, I will.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator – just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard. Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it’s not even a contact sport – it’s a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

A President cannot always be popular.

As a man sow, shall he reap. and I know that talk is cheap. But the heat of the battle is as sweet as the victory.

Our work is never over.

The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven’t had that fear.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

The wisest have the most authority.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

It’s time to stop thinking of the Republican Party as an exclusive club where your ideological card is checked at the door, and start thinking about how we can attract more solution-based leaders like Nathan Fletcher and Anthony Adams.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.