When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.
Look, Americans will go for leadership that makes sense. Our job, you know, as public officials, is not to put our finger in the air. Our job is to listen, and then lead.
The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.
I believe in a business boarding up early. If you make a mistake, you put the boards in the window of the store and say, "Hey, I made a mistake." Let me take two shots in the arm and a punch on the nose and let me get on to the next thing. I don't believe in worrying over failures. I worry about successes. This is opposite from most people. Most people zero in on their failures. I try to keep all my attention on a pyramid type philosophy rather than the averaging-down philosophy.
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher -- a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.