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

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.

Washington isn’t a city, it’s an abstraction.

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

You cannot be President of the United States if you don’t have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial in the Civil War and all that stuff.

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.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase… Rather, it’s displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. harbors leading international terrorists, people described by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department as leading terrorists, like Orlando Bosch, now Posada Carriles, not to speak of those who actually implement state terrorism.

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

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.

A President cannot always be popular.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

What Britain needs is an iron lady.

If I can be a leader, I will.

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

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

If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.

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.

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.

Say ‚Toronto‘ or ‚Ontario,‘ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.

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.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

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

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

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.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

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

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Managers today have to do more with less, and get better results from limited resources, more than ever before.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

Politics is not bean bags. It’s serious, tough stuff.

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was that they didn’t get that. No joke – I’d leave meetings crying all the time.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.