“It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling – and indeed healthy – to ask why you have been given so much.”

If you cannot allow people to do their jobs, nobody with substance and creativity will work for you.

What you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday.

The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity – and an obligation – to help them turn this desire into reality.

We can’t rely – or no country can rely on just a single personality to carry it forward. And so what the American founding fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection not human perfection.

When somebody underestimated me, it made me want to prove them wrong.

People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they’ll join your side.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

I hope that all of us who were fortunate enough to have benefited will put our time, our resources and our efforts into making sure that kids, particularly kids without means, have a way to achieve.

NATO is built on security, but it’s also built on values.

Human beings are not perfect. Their institutions are not perfect, but they have to keep trying. And America has to help people keep trying.

The first step for a leader is to be right with yourself. Integrity is the basis of leadership.

Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.

Great leaders never accept the world as it was and always work for the world as it should be.

Differences can be strength rather than a handicap.

You might not be able to control your circumstances but you can control your response to your circumstances.

Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy.

… a nation without humor is not only sad but dangerous.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief.

I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.

Hep is a very dangerous disease that can cause a number of permanent conditions, including death, which is extremely permanent.

For we can only know that we know nothing, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.

It is dangerous for a ruler to trust others. He who trusts others can be manipulated by others.