“I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote.”

The essence of leadership is building bonds of trust in your organization.

Maybe we don’t put our young people in situations often enough where they’re allowed to fail. When you fail you gain experience, and with enough experience, you don’t fail as often.

Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you’ve got to compromise. You’ve got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

The freedom to do your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best.

You know you’re a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.

Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.

First you train the followers to accomplish the mission. Second, you resource them: Make sure that they have the tools to do the job. Third, you reward them: You give them medals or bonuses.

Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

It is good if your enemy underestimates you. The dumber they think you are the more surprised they are when you kill them.

Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

Give me the right people and I don’t much care what organization you give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people and it doesn’t matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen.

Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience.

It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances.

I think it’s quite difficult to understand what kind of life a writer leads. They might be millionaires, or they might be starving people.

It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.

I’m sorry if someone made you feel as though you are difficult to love.

There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.

The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs. This kind of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than it is commonly thought to be.

I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.