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

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

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

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

I don’t think I would run for president.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

Look, when you’re the president, there’s all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it’s just the nature of the job.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

I love to dance, but my children tell me I shouldn’t. Can’t see why.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

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

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

I’m more than comfortable just sitting back and scoring 21, 22 points or whatever and getting 10, 11 assists whatever the case might be. More than comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of the pieces that you have around you and what you can do to elevate everybody else.

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

Example is leadership.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

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

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is ‚to be prepared‘.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

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

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

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

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

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

I mean, I look at my dad. He was twenty when he started having a family, and he was always the coolest dad. He did everything for his kids, and he never made us feel like he was pressured. I know that it must be a great feeling to be a guy like that.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

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

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

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.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.