A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

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

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

Political courage is not political suicide.

Of two evils, choose neither.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

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.

I am confident that when the facts and policies have been examined, when the record of performances have been reviewed, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will once again be elected to lead our beloved country to a better future.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you’re failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

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.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.

It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don’t move fast, but I just keep moving.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

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.

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.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

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 other day the President said, I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy?

How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well being of the people.

Once I’ve decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.