I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

I understand everybody in this country doesn’t agree with the decisions I’ve made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

You cannot be President of the United States if you don’t have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial in the Civil War and all that stuff.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

I have been on the road and visited numerous places and met people from all over the globe. I can say that it looks nearly the same everywhere I have been: The climate crisis is ignored by people in charge, despite the science being crystal clear.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

My life is mine to remember.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

We named the book ‚Extreme Ownership‘ because we really found that when we looked at not only at leaders but at teams that were the most successful, we found that the ones that had this attitude of extreme ownership were the ones that did the best, and it’s definitely an attitude that I had.

The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.

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 piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else – I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

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.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

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

Never find fault with the absent.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

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

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

If I can be a leader, I will.

Leadership is influence.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues – of my comrades in the movement – who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

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.

There are some women I definitely would not want to succeed me… but a man like David Souter, that would be great.

Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

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

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.