I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

It’s tough to negotiate from a position of weakness.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Homophobia is real in this country.

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

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

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

I have an urge to communicate. I think I’m a change from what it would be like dating a normal guy who doesn’t talk too much.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

No nation should threaten its neighbors by massing troops along the border.

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.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Coffee is a language in itself.

I can’t deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring. And beyond that, it would be an opportunity to make a real impact on people’s lives on a global scale. But there are a lot of other things I want to do first.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

Be not a slave of words.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.

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

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.