Quotes About Leadership

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite

A republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it.

But this momentous question [the Missouri Compromise], like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union.

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

The generation which commences a revolution can rarely complete it.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy the first is but a splendid misery.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.