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.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.

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.

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

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don’t understand why it’s the government’s responsibility.

When you are president, being able to clearly articulate detailed plans to help the people of this country is a good thing. Knowing what you’re doing is a good thing. And let me tell you, Hillary Clinton absolutely knows what she’s doing.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.

I love being in the United States Senate.

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

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

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

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

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

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 United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.

I didn’t leave bodybuilding until I felt that I had gone as far as I could go. It will be the same with my film career. When I feel the time is right, I will then consider public service. I feel that the highest honor comes from serving people and your country.

Service of any type requires preparation.

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.

My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don’t share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.