Eduard Shevardnadze Quotes

Every President wants to do right.

The important thing is that we recognize our President's leadership, that he is not saying: I am going to walk away from this. He is saying: I am going to do the right thing.

I hope Mr. Obama has success.

A failure to act is a terrible, stunning legacy for any leader. But far worse when it is the president of the United States. And that's the point driven home by Romney's selection of Ryan, who dared to lead when Obama did not.

Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets.

There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions.

The American president has a peculiar leadership responsibility to speak out for freedom.

I think Obama is handling his image very well, but I think he lacks boldness.

When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president. He didn't care whether it was the easy thing to do politically - that's not how he was raised - he cared that it was the right thing to do.

As a former minority leader who became the first Republican Speaker of the House in Florida since Reconstruction, I know that leadership is not an easy task.

You are beseeched most earnestly my dear Col. Harrison, to exert yourself in endeavoring to rescue your Country, by, (let me add) sending your ablest and best Men to Congress; these characters must not slumber, nor sleep at home, in such times of pressing danger; they must not content themselves in the enjoyment of places of honor or profit in their own Country, while the common interests of America are mouldering and sinking into irretrievable (if a remedy is not soon applied) ruin, in which theirs also must ultimately be involved.

We cannot ask our soldiers to be courageous if our politicians are not.

The Presidential function is difficult and full of responsibility. It calls from the incumbent a plenitude of his physical vigor. I am aware I am no longer strong enough for the task. Wherefore, I resign.

Donald Trump, perhaps the least historically minded man ever to reach the pinnacle of power, has fallen under the spell of what (and who) has come before. What's revealing about a President's sense of history is less about the history itself than about what that President's perspective on the history tells us about him.

Running a government as chief minister and managing affairs of the nation are different things.

It's hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what's right, even though people are not going to like you for it.

It's easy to be popular when you don't make the decisions a president makes. And it's easy to be unpopular when you're the president because you're making decisions that at the time might seem unpopular; but when historians sort it out, it changes.

At least George W. Bush feels like - and I've heard him say it - "You can't judge me now, because look at Abraham Lincoln. When he was in the middle of that war and 600,000 people died, he was vilified for the Gettysburg Address because they felt it was too short and almost insulting, and now you look back and it's considered one of the great speeches of all time and he's considered one of the great presidents of all time."

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

It seems to me that President Carter has earned his place as if not the worst president in history, the worst president of the 20th Century.

The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.

I have... submitted the resignation of the government, and I have declared that I will not be a candidate to head the (next) government.

I assume, gladly, that in the allocation to America of remarkable leaders like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, the Lord was just as careful. After all, if you've got only one Abraham Lincoln, you'd better put him in that point in history when he's most needed-much as some of us might like to have him now.

There are young people today who feel that we shouldn't have developed the atomic bomb, that it was a mistake. Through no fault of their own, they don't have this sense of history. They didn't live through this most terrifying period when we thought we were losing the race with Adolf Hitler.

I admire King Hussein his courage in leading his country for a long time.