I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

Some day I shall be President.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Leadership is influence.

We can’t allow the world’s worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Unless and until you inspire the people, you will not get results. Imposition will never give you the results. Inspiration will always give you the results.

With Benghazi, I don’t see anyone saying, ‚Hey look, I am overall responsible for this and therefore, I take responsibility for what happened. It’s my fault.‘ I haven’t heard that yet. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin, the Osama bin Laden raid, it seems everyone made that decision, and that’s just unbelievable to me.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

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

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

The other day the President said, I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy?

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.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.

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

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

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.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

When you want a thing done, ‚Don’t do it yourself‘ is a good motto for Scoutmasters.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.

You can play fast but not in a hurry. As a point guard, I can dictate that.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

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.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

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

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

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

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the U.S. economy, as planners, private and state, shifted it toward financialization and the offshoring of production, driven in part by the declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing.

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

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

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.

Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.

With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‚Is this the end of them?‘ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.

We need every person on Earth to acknowledge that climate change is real and encourage each other and our leaders to address the challenge.