“Race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident,real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counterproductive.”

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.

Education is of no value and talent is worthless – unless you have an unwavering aim. Never find yourself without a compass.

The plane of consistency is the abolition of all metaphor; all that consists is Real.

The thing is, continuity of strategic direction and continuous improvement in how you do things are absolutely consistent with each other. In fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.

Every transfinite consistent multiplicity, that is, every transfinite set, must have a definite aleph as its cardinal number.

Integrity means that if our private life were suddenly exposed, we’d have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Integrity means that our outward life is consistent with our inner convictions.

Success consists in the climb.

Consistency is the DNA of mastery.

In my entire career, I’ve never cried, consistently, through a movie, ever.

All success consists in this: You are doing something for somebody – benefiting humanity – and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.