Quotes About Power

it was not only the executive's right but his responsibility "to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.

Each party profited by the offices when in power," Roosevelt explained, "and when in opposition each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it itself had done and intended again to do.

The vice presidency "ought to be abolished," he told his friend Leonard Wood. "The man who occupies it may at any moment be everything; but meanwhile he is practically nothing.

His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization—the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding up of voters—was as crucial as the broad ideology laid out in the platform. The same intimate involvement in campaign organization that he displayed in these early years would characterize all of Lincoln's future campaigns.

They were stealin' votes in east Texas," Johnson supporter and Austin mayor Tom Miller recalled, "we were stealin' votes in south Texas, only Jesus Christ could say who actually won it." But Jesus wasn't counting, and, by an eighty-seven-vote margin, "Landslide Lyndon" attained the Senate seat he had coveted for so long.

What is the difference between power, title, and leadership? Is leadership possible without a purpose larger than personal ambition?

When Taft gives way to his (anger), one reporter observed, it is to inflict a merciless thrashing upon its victim, for whom thereafter he has no use whatsoever. With Roosevelt is a case of powder and spark; there is a vivid flash and a deafening roar, but when the smoke is blown away, it is the end.

Such men of "towering" egos, in whom ambition is divorced from the people's best interests, were not men to lead a democracy; they were despots.

If ever there was a country unprepared for the war, it was the U.S. in 1940. And yet now, only four years later, the United States was clearly the most productive, most powerful country on the face of the earth.

Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Do the times make the leader or does the leader shape the times? How can a leader infuse a sense of purpose and meaning into people's lives? What is the difference between power, title, and leadership? Is leadership possible without a purpose larger than personal ambition?

Momentum is not a mysterious mistress," Johnson liked to say. "It is a controllable fact of political life that depends on nothing more exotic than preparation.

Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were "troublemakers," more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tangible achievement.

If this were so; it meant the people I knew didn't belong in the governing class. And the other people did. And I intended to be in the governing class. If they proved too hard for me I would quit, but until I made the effort I would not quit. And find out if I was too weak to hold my own. -Theodore Roosevelt

power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

The bullet that rests in Roosevelt's chest has killed Wilson for the Presidency," one Democratic speaker suspected.

Roosevelt repeatedly "brought his clenched fist down on the palm of his other hand.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail," Abraham Lincoln said, "without it nothing can succeed.

No cosmic dramatist could possibly devise a better entrance for a new President—or a new Dictator, or a new Messiah—than that accorded to Franklin Roosevelt," White House aide Robert Sherwood observed, aligning himself with those who believe that a leader is summoned to the fore by the needs of the time.

Don't hit unless you have to, but when you hit, hit hard.

I'm giving my whole life to breaking the butterfly of a John Rockefeller upon the wheel of my ponderous articles

Do leaders shape the times or do the times summon their leaders?

He sought the knowledge—not easily accessible—of who had the power of decision over the particular matter in question, and, the source of authority identified, by what means influence could be exerted. This

Regardless of one's impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership.