I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

The President’s post should not be politicised. Once a president is elected, he is above politics.

Mr. Morgan buys his partners; I grow my own.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

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

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I’ve met with, and I’ve met them all: It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

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.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.

It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

I just think overall there’s not as many female ministers than there are male ministers.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

I just hate meetings. Though it’s true that once you’ve made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don’t want to seize every opportunity to do so.

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

We need a president who will choose to do what’s best for the country, even when it doesn’t personally benefit them.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

All leaders in the Lord’s Church are called by proper authority. No prophet or any other leader in this Church, for that matter, has ever called himself or herself. No prophet has ever been elected.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

Anybody who tells you that a two-day conference, you’re going to turn into the General Patton of leadership, they’re not telling you the truth. But you can learn the fundamentals; you can absolutely understand the fundamentals.

As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

People make a big fuss over you when you’re President. But I’m very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t go to my head.