Leadership Thoughts from Great Leaders

John F. Kennedy: And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Abraham Lincoln: It has been said of the world's history hitherto that might makes right. It is for us and for our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might.

Ronald Reagan: Nations do not mistrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other.

Mao Zedong: Politics is war carried out without bloodshed, while war is politics carried out with bloodshed.

John F. Kennedy: Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

Bill Clinton: As we have throughout this century, we will lead with the power of our example, but be prepared, when necessary, to make an example of our power.

Abraham Lincoln: It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.

Georges Pompidou: A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.

Jimmy Carter: America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense ... human rights invented America.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

Woodrow Wilson: I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose!

Zig Ziglar: You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.

W. Somerset Maugham: At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

Thomas Huxley: Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Phillips Brooks: Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Cyril Connolly: Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

G. K. Chesterton: There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

Sam Ewing: It's not the hours you put in your work that count, it's work you put in the hours.

Edgar Watson Howe: A man has his clothes made to fit him; a woman makes herself fit her clothes.

Helen Rowland: To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning but to a man it is the beginning of the end.

Peter De Vries: The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

Thomas à Kempis: A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.

William Shakespeare: O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other, a man a beast.

John Churton Collins: Half of our mistakes in life arises from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel.

H. L. Mencken: It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

Mark Twain: It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

Kahlil Gibran: When you love you should not say, 'God is in my heart,' but rather, 'I am in the heart of God.' And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Elbert Hubbard: If your religion does not change you, then you should change your religion.