Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.

A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

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.

The onus is on the managers to send out an attacking formation and to tell their players to be bold.

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

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

With Benghazi, I don’t see anyone saying, ‚Hey look, I am overall responsible for this and therefore, I take responsibility for what happened. It’s my fault.‘ I haven’t heard that yet. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin, the Osama bin Laden raid, it seems everyone made that decision, and that’s just unbelievable to me.

The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.

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

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

There’s no doubt that usually a president’s public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else – I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

I have a cult-like following because I exemplify what it is to be a human being.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there.

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.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‚President Can’t Swim.‘

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?

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

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.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

I loved being Secretary of State, that’s probably evident to everyone who watched me.

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

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

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

A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a moment.

Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

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.

I have always believed in evolving a consensus before taking any major decision.

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

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

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

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

I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters – and the church does not speak for me.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

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

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.