leadership Quotes

Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead - they call us.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.

Obama did organize a great large number of people and many enthusiastic people, what's called in the press 'Obama's Army.' But the army is supposed to take instructions, not to implement, to introduce, develop programs and call on its own candidate to implement them. That's critical.

When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies; everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

Well, yes, I've fired a lot of people. Generally I like other people to fire, because it's always a lousy task. But I have fired many people.