I loved being Secretary of State, that’s probably evident to everyone who watched me.

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

How can a president not be an actor?

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!

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

I have something in common with Nazis in that I am opposed to the radical Left. And when you oppose the radical Left, you end up being a part of a much larger group that includes Nazis in it.

Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

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.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Locally, I’ll vote one way and nationally, maybe another.

There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. But there’s another group that just hates the Second Amendment.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign better than anyone, but he can’t run a state.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

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.

Obama, of course, outspent McCain.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

People are finding it harder and harder to relate to foreign policy.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

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

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

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.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

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

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

I don’t follow politics much.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

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

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

I have decided in 2020 to run for president.

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.