The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

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

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.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

I loved being Secretary of State, that’s probably evident to everyone who watched me.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.

Especially when you’re at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee. I prefer to praise employees for what they’re doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it’s the way I choose to bet.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

It is always your next move.

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.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

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.

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president. He didn’t care whether it was the easy thing to do politically – that’s not how he was raised – he cared that it was the right thing to do.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

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

A great fortune is a great slavery.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

We all have the duty to do good.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

If you gonna wear the mohawk, you stick with it. You don’t just be dibby-dabbing. You make up your mind.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

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.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

My one big regret is that I didn’t play on for ten more years.

I’ve never gone wrong trusting my gut.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

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.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.