I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration… that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

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.

It’s very important to like the people you work with. Otherwise, your job is going to be quite miserable.

There’s a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

Control is the source of strategic power.

I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else – I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

You can’t choose up sides on a round world.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

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.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, ‚I really like your tie.‘

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

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.

Some day I shall be President.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

When you play sports like tennis, you’re alone, and that’s a good school for life, but it’s also a good school for life to bring your best and make those around you better, too – helping others in difficult moments.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.

You know, you can only lead them from behind.

I’ve always been an unselfish guy, and that’s the only way I know how to play on the court and I try to play to the maximum of my ability – not only for myself but for my teammates.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

I’m more than comfortable just sitting back and scoring 21, 22 points or whatever and getting 10, 11 assists whatever the case might be. More than comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of the pieces that you have around you and what you can do to elevate everybody else.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

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

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Love… it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.

I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested.