Many people have a very hard time truly believing that doing the right thing by others, striving to serve them to the greatest extent, can actually be a competitive advantage.

If leadership is, fundamentally, about serving others, then any one person should be able to move between being a "leader" and a "follower."

Theodore Roosevelt is a natural choice for leadership education. Along with many other observers, I believe he was among the greatest of leaders to serve as president.

Any gathering of people requires leadership to cohere, to achieve its potential contribution. What is not needed is a "boss" of yore, directing everyone else's efforts toward "the one best way."

Ronald Reagan memorably combined intimacy with distance.

Ronald Reagan was unusual in being an authentic personality. Unlike many professional actors - and politicians - he was much the same behind the curtain as in front.

Theodore Roosevelt crafted a masterpiece of service. He served people in every aspect of his life. His legacy was transformational, encompassing his family, his nation and the world.

Ronald Reagan's career was so unusual, so unprecedented, that this would be very interesting to learn, to gain understanding of his way of looking at the world.

William Ewart Gladstone is credited with the credo that a prime minister must be a "good butcher." The metaphor is apt insofar as the root of the word "decision" is "to cut."

In a time when our nation is engaged in multiple, long-term wars, it's critical that "the military" not become an abstraction to the vast majority of Americans who are not participants.

President-elect John F.Kennedy said to Robert McNamara that there's no school for presidents, or, for that matter, for secretaries of defense.

Scientology does not teach you. It only reminds you. For the information was yours in the first place.

I really think it's a white, bourgeois idea to pretend that you don't have influences. It seems to be the obsession strictly of white people in college.

I spent four years in the United States Army between 1985 and 1989, and I certainly learned how to survive out in the woods.

Abandon learning and there will be no sorrow.

I never try to set goals that I know are too tough to achieve or out of my reach.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

I try to find a way to make it comfortable or interesting or funny to me.

I think politics should be expressed in this way and not in other ways. And not just politics - sentiments, even certain states of being.

I have a healthy lifestyle, but there's nothing you can really do to prevent from rolling an ankle or something like that.

I think of John every day. I do try to block it, but December 8th is not the only day I think of him.