Benjamin Wade Quotes

I believe, however, that impending events will call us and we must respond but where, with whom, and how?

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.

I'm always in trouble.

When we say that leadership is a choice, it basically means you can choose the level of initiative you want to exercise in response to the question, ‘What is the best I can do under the given circumstances?’

The worst days of leadership beat the best days of being an onlooker.

Whatever happens, take responsibility.

When you confront a problem you begin to solve it.

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

I definitely see myself as a leader. One of the ways I've been lucky enough to lead and likely to continue to lead is just my actions and the way that I approach the game and working hard and being a player that steps up in big-time situations when plays need to be made.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

The rule for effective governance is simple. It is one Ronald Reagan knew by heart. And one that he successfully employed with Social Security and the Cold War. When there is a problem, you fix it. That is the job you have been sent to do and you cannot wait for someone else to do it for you.

There is only one way to respond to the issue of leadership and that is to lead.

It's one thing to make the speeches. It's another to make the tough decisions.

[President] McKinley gave [Lt. Andrew Sommers] Rowan a letter to be delivered to [General Calixto] Garcia: Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the eternal, there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land. It is not book learning that young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do the thing—"carry a message to Garcia.

When the public or the Council pass the buck up to me I am going to act.

Meet the challenges of the time.

When you get offered the captaincy, you've got to have a go. In India, where it went well, I was playing well, and anything that needed doing, I'd do it myself. When I wasn't playing well, it was tough.

People can expect that from me as premier: If there's something to be done, something to be fixed, it'll happen.

When you see something that needs to be done, you do it.

I'm never going to turn down a fight.