The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

Most people don’t like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

When you want a thing done, ‚Don’t do it yourself‘ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

Some day I shall be President.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.

I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.

I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

A President cannot always be popular.

Engineering didn’t take to me. And what saved me and kept me in college was I ran into ROTC cadets who were in a fraternity called The Pershing Rifles. And I found my place. I found discipline. I found structure. I found people that were like me and I liked.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

I can move any crowd.

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don’t understand the software parts of it. And so you really can’t make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple’s the only company that has everything under one roof.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

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

My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

Since the team understands that the leader is de facto in charge, in that respect, a leader has nothing to prove. But in another respect, a leader has everything to prove: Every member of the team must develop the trust and confidence that their leader will exercise good judgment, remain calm, and make the right decisions when it matters most.

I think I was identified as a failed president because I wasn’t re-elected.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

The President’s post should not be politicised. Once a president is elected, he is above politics.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

Except for the title ‚father,‘ there is no title, including ‚vice president,‘ that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I’ve been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

Unless and until you inspire the people, you will not get results. Imposition will never give you the results. Inspiration will always give you the results.

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they’re not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.