Quotes About Leadership

We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.

What I could not support was a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models.

You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want. It is your turn now to change the world. Yes we can!

this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ...~~Barack Obama upon winning the Democratic nomination for presidency conveys his thinking of what that means ....for the world, Tuesday, JUNE 03, 2008

I'm the President, but he's The Boss.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

Di Indonesia, kekuasaan diperlihatkan secara terang-terangan, tidak pandang bulu, terbuka, selalu segar dalam ingatan.

Two hundred and thirty-two years and they wait until the country's falling apart before they turn it over to the brother!

This, I was coming to realize, was the nature of the presidency: Sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed.

I like being president because i get a cool house

What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already.

the words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms...

what became abundantly clear as soon as Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight was that on just about every subject relevant to governing the country she had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about.

we better win this thing or the country is screwed.

Then again, a president wasn't a lawyer or an accountant or a pilot, hired to carry out some narrow, specialized task. Mobilizing public opinion, shaping working coalitions - that was the job. Whether I liked it or not, people were moved by emotion, not facts. To elicit the best rather than the worst of those emotions, to buttress those better angels of our nature with reason and sound policy, to perform while still speaking the truth - that was the bar I needed to clear.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

To the furniture worker's child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president -- that's the future we hope for. That's the vision we share. That's where we need to go -- forward

Please proceed, Governor.

When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.

Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.

hadn't yet gotten either item through Congress—mainly because, on my very first day in office, I hadn't had the foresight to tell Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats to revise the chamber rules and get rid of the filibuster once and for all.

Finally, I wanted to tell a more personal story that might inspire young people considering a life in public service; how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in. A way to explain the different strands of my mixed up heritage and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works