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

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

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.

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

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

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.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.

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

I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand Points of Light. This is my mission, and I will complete it.

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

What Washington needs is adult supervision.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

I just think overall there’s not as many female ministers than there are male ministers.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

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

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

People want to feel hopeful.

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill, nobody – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

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.

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

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.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

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

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

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

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

I’m not a one-man show. I was never that in my life, and I never want to be that.

Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.