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.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

If you destroyed half the pharmaceutical production in the United States, we’d think it’s a pretty serious problem. In fact, we’d probably go to war.

I want a president with a record of public service: someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase form and fortune for ourselves; we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

Everybody has a little bit of Watergate in him.

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

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.

In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison – they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.

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

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.

Iraq is a long way from the U.S., but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

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.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I’ve always done it in private.

Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren’t empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we’re not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

I’m going to try to unite all Americans.

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.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

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

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

One must steer, not talk.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.

There is only one ‚retirement plan‘ for terrorists.

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

Although I don’t like the way the Chinese do business, I continue to do business in China. I have to. They’re the next world power.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

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.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

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.

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.