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

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

I’m not a futurist.

My business is to prevent the future.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Let’s be honest – tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It’s also not who we are as Americans.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But 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.

It’s hard for a player to plan for the future, especially in a game like football.

It’s when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that’s the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that’s great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.

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.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

I knew credibility would come only in time and through earnest performances.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter – for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible – and no one can now doubt the word of America.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

If I don’t run for president, we’ll all be OK.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Our vision and commitment is towards the country’s progress, its place in the world and the happiness of its people.

As international support for Obama’s decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.

It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

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.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

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

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Don’t make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I’m not.

If you want to have sustained joy, you have to not only make sure that you think right, but you also have to make decisions now that are going to guarantee some joy in the future.

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

Everything I’ve been thinking, every vision, even down to every shot I throw, it just ends up here in reality. Whether it was in a fight and how to react or whether it was in a stadium with screaming fans or whether I was in a fancy car or the best clothes ever, I always put myself somewhere.

The vision is to figure out how there can really be dynamic entrepreneurialism in space.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

When I’m in management meetings when we’re deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I’m the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That’s the part of my life where I feel most in control.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

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.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around forever.

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