Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

Tell me I have to be somewhere, and I’ll be there 20 minutes early and stay there longer than anybody else. You hold up a lot of people if you’re not on time.

I’ve never been a hands-on dad. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but you can’t run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

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

Women can’t do everything at the same time, we need to understand milestones in our lives comes in segments.

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.

Most people don’t like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

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.

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.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

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

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

The thing most people don’t pick up when they become an entrepreneur is that it never ends. It’s 24/7.

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

I’m one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you’re doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

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.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

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.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

Standing as I do, with my hand upon this staff, and under the folds of the American flag, I ask you to stand by me so long as I stand by it.

To lead people walk behind them.

Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you’re trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you’re giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you’re trying to do?

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

If you’re looking for the safe choice, you shouldn’t be supporting a black guy named Barack Obama to be the next leader of the free world.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

I didn’t work hard to sit down and not work.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

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.

Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.

The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.

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.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.