In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony – even vicious harmony – on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

I have a good team. It’s good to have a good team.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

I have always been grateful to Colonel Longley. He proved to me that when people in authority take a stand, good can come out of it.

All good leaders are connectors. They relate well and make people feel confident about themselves and their leader.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

The President’s post should not be politicised. Once a president is elected, he is above politics.

To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you’re able to be more patient. Patience is not just about waiting for something… it’s about how you wait, or your attitude while waiting.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Having the support from everyone, the bosses, whoever within the team, definitely makes it much easier for me as a driver.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

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.

To win is always good for the feeling of the whole team.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

I won’t have to do any major changes to continue my career a long way, hopefully. Just hopefully stay healthy and be able to help a team out as I go through and still play at a pretty high level.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

I’ve been so blessed to play for the greatest coach at a time when our organization has done incredible things. I’ve played with the best teammates. Playing for Mr. Kraft and what his influence on the team has been.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

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

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.

Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.

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

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

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.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The sergeant is the Army.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.

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.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

And now, of course this is another thing I didn’t count on, that now as the governor of the state of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling.

These people are very unskilled in arms… with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.