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

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

I don’t go down the road of condemning.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

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

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.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

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

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

Most businesses think that product is the most important thing, but without great leadership, mission and a team that deliver results at a high level, even the best product won’t make a company successful.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

I have not endorsed Trump and will not do so.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a ‚should‘ involved, and this cannot be worked out from, ‚If I do this, what will happen?‘ alone.

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

When I get logical, and I don’t trust my instincts – that’s when I get in trouble.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

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