The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

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

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

I have the space and liberty to create.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

The die is cast.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.

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.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

I make decisions all day, so it’s nice for a woman like me to go to dinner and have the man take the menu and say, ‚Let me order.‘ Other women would be offended by that, but I’m like, ‚Good. Because I can’t make one more decision today.‘ I want someone to rub my feet without being asked.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.

War settles nothing.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues – of my comrades in the movement – who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

I don’t ever make moves under pressure.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

This young century will be liberty’s century.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

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.

You need to understand, if you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.

As is the case with most people in this game, I am driven by financial motives and creative motives; the question I had to answer is which motive I will give priority to?