A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

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

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president – and the president alone – who always makes the final call.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

And I think it’s that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

The other day the President said, I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy?

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

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

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.