Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

I bear a charmed life.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people’s trust in their government.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

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

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.

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.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead – they call us.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

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

Education is the best provision for old age.

I’m not the judge. You know, God didn’t tell me to go around judging everybody.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

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

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

I have always believed in evolving a consensus before taking any major decision.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

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.

Time discovers truth.

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.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.