Leadership Struggle Quotes

It was the worst day of my life. Khrushchev savaged me.

I have a nightmare about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] killing each other. Not every month, but now and then. I also have a recurring dream about losing.

The sudden death of the leading man will cause change, making another man leader. Soon, but too late, the young man will attain high office. By land and sea, he will be feared.

The President wants to avoid being a lame duck. He’s trying not to limp and quack at the same time.

I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

I reached a situation in which I cannot conduct the presidency.

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.

So it went until the spring of 1927, when Charles Ruthenberg died and the struggle for factional parity at his casket – conducted, it must be said, somewhat more fairly than the struggle for parity at the fourth convention – climaxed the ceremonies to honor the first leader of American Communism.

Tell Dr. Madison that we are now willing to submit to his Philadelphia lawyer for head of the Treasury. The public patient is so very sick that we must swallow anything, however nauseous.

Both strength of mind and body are necessary, strengths which in the last few months have deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

It is sometimes easier to form a party than to attain by degrees the head of a party already formed.

Netanyahu wants to make me and my party out as small, lame and uninfluential.

Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.

I didn't leave the Congress; I was expelled.

I love watching the Serengeti, the way lions live. The only way the king lion loses his crown is by somebody physically defeating him.

Tony [Blair] slowly sucked me back in for the 2005 campaign, and from six months out, I was basically working full time trying to keep the Tony[Blair] - Gordon[Brown] thing together for the campaign. It was awful.

What hurts the GOP is when we have leaders placing the blame on other leaders within the party.

This is going to kill me. I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position.

I will not take orders from Bob Haldeman and the West Wing. Unless I can take orders from you only, I am going to resign.

The Spanish PM rang me to say: 'I have the support of only 4 per cent of the people.' I said, 'Crikey, that's even less than think Elvis Presley is still alive.'

This is absolutely terrible. I’m quite unprepared for it. David [his older brother] has been trained for this all his life. I’ve never even seen a state paper.

House Speaker John Boehner has less sway over his caucus members than they have over him.

Gordon Brown is a character from a tragic opera, twisted by ambition and a Presbyterian sense of fateful destiny. He has waited 13 years, mostly in Tony Blair's shadow, for this poisoned chalice and has a pessimist's luck.

I think there were times when, if circumstances had developed, I might have been tempted into politics. I am a fan of Tony Blair. I think Gordon Brown is a fine man, but I think he's headed for one hell of a bloody struggle.

For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from.