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.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

Political courage is not political suicide.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.

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

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

The great thieves lead away the little thief.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

I actually don’t read most of the coverage about Facebook. I try to learn from getting input from people who use our services directly more than from pundits.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

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.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

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.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

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.

I’m sure a lot of people out there make mistakes.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

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!

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.