I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

I always put myself out there. I’m not afraid to commit to something.

Especially when you’re at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee. I prefer to praise employees for what they’re doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it’s the way I choose to bet.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people. Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

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

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

Whoever won’t fight when the President calls him, deserves to be kicked back in his hole and kept there.

I don’t regret anything.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

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.

I’ve never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

You have to be tough and have a lot of faith.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

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

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

I’m not a one-man show. I was never that in my life, and I never want to be that.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

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.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

If you deserve it, go get it.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.