The army teaches boys to think like men.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

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

When I checked into SEAL Team One many years ago, one of the things that I noticed was there was this old guy, who was younger than I am today, who I decided that I was going to be like. I wanted to emulate what he was doing, and one of those things was he got to work before anybody else.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Whatever work you do, you think are you doing this for the good of the nation? That’s the basic training. The other basic training is discipline. Your life should be disciplined. The other thing they say is what work you get, do it well.

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

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

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

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.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.

The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him when I arrive.

We need every person on Earth to acknowledge that climate change is real and encourage each other and our leaders to address the challenge.

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.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

It’s physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

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

What makes you a SEAL, what makes you a SEAL is being a good tactician on the battle field, understanding how to shoot, move, and communicate, knowing small unit maneuver warfare. That’s what makes a good SEAL, and so that is the course of instruction that I taught, was getting SEAL platoons ready for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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.

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

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God… I wanted to talk about the apostles, the disciples and all that.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

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

The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.

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.

Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work.

For me, training is my meditation, my yoga, hiking, biking all rolled into one. Wake up early in the morning, generally around 4 o’clock, and I’ll do my cardio on an empty stomach. Stretch, have a big breakfast, and then I’ll go train.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

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.

I think I’ve really stepped outside the box in the way I try to train, eat, hydrate, the cognitive brain games I play on a daily or weekly basis to try to build up some durability within my body, within my brain, to be able to go out there and play at a high level at age 38.

Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.

The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.

Having the support from everyone, the bosses, whoever within the team, definitely makes it much easier for me as a driver.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

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

There are people with otherwise chaotic and disorganized lives, a certain type of person that’s always found a home in the restaurant business in much the same way that a lot of people find a home in the military.

The army is the true nobility of our country.

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.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Americans… still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do.

Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.