Quotes About Leadership

I gotta say, boss," he told me, "that was some real gangster shit back there.

Barack Obama

Getting things done meant subjecting yourself to criticism, and the alternative—playing it safe, avoiding controversy, following the polls—was not only a recipe for mediocrity but a betrayal of the hopes of those citizens who'd put you in office.

Barack Obama

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.

We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

What's missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.

I'd long believed that the more perspectives around a table, the better an organization performed, and I took pride in the fact that we'd recruited the most diverse cabinet in history.

I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer's lobby.

Politics doesn't have to be what people think it is. It can be something more.

not just Dr. King but John Lewis and Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. In their heroic efforts—going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs—I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up.

Part of the argument I made to Michelle before running for president was that if I pulled it off, kids all over the world would see themselves and their possibilities differently. And that alone would be worth it.

Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time

If we want other countries to support our priorities," I told my NSC team, "we can't just bully them into it. We've got to show them we're taking their perspectives into account—or at least can find them on a map.

subjecting yourself to criticism, and the alternative—playing it safe, avoiding controversy, following the polls—was not only a recipe for mediocrity but a betrayal of the hopes of those citizens who'd put you in office.

Wanting to be in politics but not of it.

knew policy; I knew how to consume and process information. It took a while to figure out that my problem wasn't a lack of a ten-point plan. Rather, it was my general inability to boil issues down to their essence, to tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.

I'd put forward what I considered to be clear positions on all these issues during the campaign. But that had been from the cheap seats, before I had hundreds of thousands of troops and a sprawling national security infrastructure under my command. Any terrorist attack would now happen on my watch. Any American lives lost or compromised, at home or abroad, would weigh uniquely on my conscience. These were my wars now.

about had made American life a hell of a lot better.

Well, that's not even a question, Mr. President," Nancy said impatiently. "We've come too far to give up now." She thought for a moment. Then, as if testing out an argument she'd later use with her caucus, she added, "If we let this go, it would be rewarding the Republicans for acting so terribly, wouldn't it? We're not going to give them the satisfaction.

It took a while to figure out that my problem wasn't a lack of a ten-point plan. Rather, it was my general inability to boil issues down to their essence, to tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.

There are things more important," he told me, "than getting reelected.

tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.

You gave them hope." "They need more than hope," I said.