If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

My job is to play quarterback, and I’m going to do that the best way I know how, because I owe that to my teammates regardless of who is out there on the field with me.

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.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

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

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.‘

You’ve all seen over the last eight years what President Obama means to this country. He is the embodiment of honor, resolve, and character – one of the finest presidents we have ever had.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power – including strong and principled diplomacy.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

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

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

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

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

The public doesn’t mind people living together without being married, providing they don’t overdo it.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

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.

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.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration… that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

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.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

When I checked into SEAL Team One many years ago, one of the things that I noticed was there was this old guy, who was younger than I am today, who I decided that I was going to be like. I wanted to emulate what he was doing, and one of those things was he got to work before anybody else.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

Our focus needs to be less on what our legacy’s going to be or how we can control each other and more how we can give to each other.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

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.

No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies; everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Anybody who tells you that a two-day conference, you’re going to turn into the General Patton of leadership, they’re not telling you the truth. But you can learn the fundamentals; you can absolutely understand the fundamentals.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

One of the roles of the Presidency is to lead a political party. Having a President in office is usually a huge advantage to a party because it gives the party a mouthpiece and an advocate at the highest level.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.