Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

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

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

I can move any crowd.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Locally, I’ll vote one way and nationally, maybe another.

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

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

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

If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

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.

I am confident that when the facts and policies have been examined, when the record of performances have been reviewed, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will once again be elected to lead our beloved country to a better future.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

It’s amazing, the culture Coach Belichick has been able to create in our system.

As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

I’m the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren’t no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn’t know about them.

If you judge, investigate.

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

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

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.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

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

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Example is leadership.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.