As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

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

I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

In my heart, I’m confident I could make a good president.

People and organizations don’t grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.

If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

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.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

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.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That’s not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That’s not leadership. That’s abandoning our middle class.

Even if you’re happy with the life you’ve chosen, you’re still curious about the other options.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

Some people, they take their form of working out as a religion that they think is better than everyone else’s. I’m not like that. If you have a better way to work out, and you can teach it to me, and I find it to be useful and gets me in better shape, I’m all about.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

When in doubt, don’t.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

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

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

I adapt and I adjust to whatever environment I’m in.

I think politicians really go with the tide.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.