We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

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.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

Everything the working class has been told to do, the rich do not do. That is my message.

I look like a woman, but I think like a man.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

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

Since the team understands that the leader is de facto in charge, in that respect, a leader has nothing to prove. But in another respect, a leader has everything to prove: Every member of the team must develop the trust and confidence that their leader will exercise good judgment, remain calm, and make the right decisions when it matters most.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

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

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president – and the president alone – who always makes the final call.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

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.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

I’m very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

The public doesn’t mind people living together without being married, providing they don’t overdo it.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

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

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.

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

I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony – even vicious harmony – on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

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