The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Leadership is influence.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

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.

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

If I made a commitment, I stood by that commitment – and try to make it real. Because when you become leaders, the most important thing you have is your word, your trust. That’s where respect comes from.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

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

Every President wants to do right.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I’ve met with, and I’ve met them all: It’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

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

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

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.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

The British people know that, given strong leadership, time, and a little bit of hope, the forces of good ultimately rally and triumph over evil.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

We can approach God’s throne with boldness because we are confident in the power of what Jesus accomplished for us at the cross.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

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

Men are only as great as they are kind.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

I don’t want a brat on my team.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

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

Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

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

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.