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

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

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

In politics… never retreat, never retract… never admit a mistake.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

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

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.‘

I can hold my own when it comes to burping. I’ve got a good feeling that I could win a championship.

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

Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead – they call us.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‚What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?‘

How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.

We need a president who will choose to do what’s best for the country, even when it doesn’t personally benefit them.

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

If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

If I’m going to get you to do stuff, I need to lead you. I can’t just order you to do it.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested.

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.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

In my heart, I’m confident I could make a good president.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

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

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.

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.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

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.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

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.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

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

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.

As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you’re failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

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.

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?