Aberjhani Quotes

Obama has proved to be particularly adept at using the media to disseminate his administration's messages, but he is a masterful orator. Bill Clinton, too.

No one is asking for an Oprah in Chief. Anyhow, Obama is too chilly by nature ever to be convincing as a human care package.

Obama's stern demeanor punctuated by intermittent flashes of his wide, relaxing smile is his greatest weapon in defusing pent-up angst.

You have to be an extremist to believe that you're gonna be the president of the United States and your name is Barack Hussein Obama! And he's using extreme methods, but his application is very smooth. Michelle Obama is extreme, her presence is extreme. And it's an extreme good. Extreme is not negative.

The art of communication is the language of leadership.

Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them - even if their employees have it right.

Obama does seem to have what both FDR and Lincoln had, which is the recognition that you have to hold back at times and then wait to come forward.

Obama's pop-cultural focus may seem demeaning to the office of the presidency. It may be mockable. But it is also tremendously effective.

A politician wants to come off as a happy warrior. To be contemplative seems almost effete, fancy – dispiriting somehow to much of your audience. He [Barack Obama] is not afraid to be this way at all.

Masterful politicians and effective agents of change tend to succeed by singling out and making salient some aspect of a nation's self-understanding, sparking a sense of recognition - and ultimately moving voters in their favor. Obama made it into an art form.

We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.

Many, perhaps most, very learned people prefer the company of their books to sitting in a crowd listening to history and art being mangled; furthermore, it is unlikely that the venerable scholars will stand up afterward to declare, "This lecture was a load of crap." The more profound a professor's distaste with the proceedings, the more likely he is to melt away at the end of the talk.

It's not enough to be right because he [Rick Perry] is right, you got to be persuasively right, got to be intellectually agile, and I think he can do it.

I think she [Hillary Clinton] would be far superior to President [Barack] Obama, who is basically remote, aloof and not involved with - he doesn't deal with members of Congress.

One of the things I would immediately do [as Commander in Chief ], in addition to defeating them here at home, is bring back the warrior class - Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President [Barack] Obama things that he didn't want to hear.

[Barack] Obama has a grasp of language and the presentation of language, particularly in times of crisis. And he did this over the race issue. He did this early on in his administration, when the country was polarized. That was unprecedented.

The thing about Barack Obama, just from being around him, is he's cooler than the other politicians, but just nerdy enough to do the job. Like you can't be really cool and be the president.

I started going out with one of my managers and he really grew me up in a lot of ways. He introduced me not just to being a full-time traveler, which I was, but he was also really very interested in history and art and continued to open my eyes up to regional history; less splashy histories. He was interested in historical societies and stuff like that. He introduced me to a way of looking at the way communities form that is the foundation for the book that I've just finished writing that has to do with what I see as effective community-building wherever I've been traveling.

Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.

Unless you took courses in architecture, engineering, or pre-med, the rest of your liberal arts education hardly prepares you for life as the business warrior and champion you envision yourself to be.

At home and abroad I have repeatedly been asked what are the main essentials of a successful prime minister. Over and above communication and vigilance, there are two factors I have always mentioned. They are sleep, and a sense of history.

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Appreciation, whether of nature, or books, or art, or men, depends very much on temperament. What is beauty or genius or greatness to one, is far from being so to another.

One of the best things Henry Miller ever said was that art goes all out. It's all out. It goes full length. . . . A big book is an all-out book in which you limit your life to things that pertain directly to the book.

Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art...Books are as essential as breathing.