John Dickerson Quotes

Like confidence, legitimacy can vanish in a hurry and once lost, is very difficult to regain.

At this stage of my life I would rather try and have some small impact within a company and suffer through those things than make such a big stink that nobody can trust to work with you. It's very important in an environment of a big institution that people don't feel threatened that you're going to expose them in any way.

If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done.

As a politician, you can run from your problems or run toward your problems.

There's this intense media spotlight; there's a need to be transparent, and, 'Oh, by the way, I'm also trying to fight a war at the same time.' It's a challenge, but it goes with the job.

As a profession, we face unlimited threats with limited resources. We face a lack of trust in some of the communities we serve. We face a whole lot of second guessing and criticism about the work we're doing and the way we're doing it.

When truth takes a backseat to ego and politics, trust is lost.

Does an American, when he represents all Americans, have to tell the truth at any cost? The answer is yes, and the consequence of the answer is that our techniques for influencing the rest of the world cannot be rich and flexible like the techniques of our competitors. We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.

We have a crisis in confidence because we have an absence of leadership.

When you give power to an executive, you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister

We lose credibility when we make idle threats.

… deterrence success is heavily dependent both on signaling the adversary on your intentions and on that adversary interpreting your signals correctly. Communications, through words and deeds, is thus central to a deterrence relationship.

It is much easier to establish trust than it is to reestablish it once you have lost it.

Being a wartime President is never just about leading the war. It is also about leading a nation at war.

It’s [the CIA’s] broken. It’s so broken that nobody wants to believe it.

What does it mean to be a great politician? To shake the hand of murders? To make concessions? To create illusions?

Global disorder is here to stay, so the challenge is to make it work as much as possible.

The sands are running out, and unless some strong hand can even now clutch Europe and rescue her from the slope down which she is slipping, the catastrophe of the peace may yet become far greater than that of the Great War

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things.

Elected leaders in government and our men and women in uniform face a range of unprecedented challenges and pressures that demand innovative solutions.

If Michael Flynn lost his job because of a gradual erosion of trust, shouldn't the easy and frequent production of official statements that are so many connecting flights from the truth also be concerning?

Working across the aisle, I helped pass laws exposing business dealings in Iran, cracking down on Iranian human rights abusers, and applying crippling sanctions to Iran's oil and gas industries.

The hope of a nation depends on a president that will follow through even in the most unfavorable of political climates.