Anybody who tells you that a two-day conference, you’re going to turn into the General Patton of leadership, they’re not telling you the truth. But you can learn the fundamentals; you can absolutely understand the fundamentals.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

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

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

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.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

I like school and I like learning.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That’s one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

How can a president not be an actor?

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

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

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

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

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.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

Women fight for democracy and engage in the world. But they shouldn’t try and be copying men and be masculine; they should anchor on the home and build on those fundamentals.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

I always believe the rule by king or official leader is outdated. Now we must catch up with the modern world.

When you want a thing done, ‚Don’t do it yourself‘ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Mastery, I learned, was not something genetic, or for a lucky few. It is something we can all attain if get rid of some misconceptions and gain clarity as to the required path.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

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.

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.