At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Material things ain’t nothing. You feel me? At the end of the day, it’s who you is. You wasn’t born with it; you gon‘ die without it.

There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people. Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as ‚us‘ and ‚them‘ – he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above… he knows that we all love our country… and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas… he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

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.

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

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.

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.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

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.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things – such as traditional marriage – that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.

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

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

I’m a mama’s boy because everything I do is with respect to my mother. I won’t do a movie or a video that would bring disrespect to my mother.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

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.

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.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

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.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

This election is about who’s going to be the next President of the United States!

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

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.‘

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.

In every walk of life, you must have leaders. An education in the spiritual world, in the labor field, in the agricultural field, we must have leaders.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument… an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

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

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

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

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.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

If I hadn’t been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.