I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you’re nuts, and you’re not as popular with girls as you should be.

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

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn’t mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they’re happy if they do get it.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

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

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

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Understanding is a two-way street.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

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.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

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

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

When things haven’t gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

My job is to play quarterback, and I’m going to do that the best way I know how, because I owe that to my teammates regardless of who is out there on the field with me.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

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

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That’s my thoughts.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

If someone lies, well, you had a choice to trust that person or not. I think the way my father raised me, well, he trusted everybody. And that worked for him.

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

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.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

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

If I don’t run for president, we’ll all be OK.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.