Ultimately this issue is on us. We’re the ones who make the decisions about what our kids eat.

I was very worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.

If I had chosen the populist course, it would have been a breach of the trust placed in me by the people.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

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.

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.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.

When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

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.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

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

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

If you’re working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

Initiative is doing the right things without being told.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

If you want to have sustained joy, you have to not only make sure that you think right, but you also have to make decisions now that are going to guarantee some joy in the future.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

Finality is not the language of politics.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

Example is leadership.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

The risk for me would be in not taking one – that’s the only thing that’s really risky for me.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it’s just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.

To bring a healthy child into this world, raise them right and watch them grow is the biggest miracle there is.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

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

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.