Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

America is just downright mean.

NATO has been a thread throughout my life.

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.

The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I’ve met with, and I’ve met them all: It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

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.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

In every walk of life, you must have leaders. An education in the spiritual world, in the labor field, in the agricultural field, we must have leaders.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

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?

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered. Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.