Pragmatic Leadership Quotes

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

I think ultimately is, Donald Trump is pragmatic.

Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.

I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue. He's consumed by neither tactics nor ideology. He is more concerned about outcomes than he is about process and categorizations.

There can be no wise politics without thought beforehand.

It is a maxim of wise government to deal with men not as they ought to be but as they are.

I'm fighting for people who cannot wait for changes, and I'm not making promises that I cannot keep.

I don't sense an [Barack] Obama party. I think politics is transactional for him.

Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.

We need a government that is what we are at our best. Smart, efficient, pragmatic and compassionate.

We can score political points. We can try to advance some important initiatives. But at some point, it takes sober-minded, responsible conservative leaders to identify when you've pushed as far as you can and to have the courage to go back and face the electorate and explain to them why you voted the way you did.

How can anybody who is the head of a nation afford not to be a prag-matist?

The conservative Republican governors tend to be more oriented toward trying to work with Democrats and getting things done.

If there's one thing I'm not going to apologise for as the leader of the Liberal Democrats in government after 60 or 70 years of being out of government, it's that you just cannot avoid but deal with the world the way it is.

The Constitution separated the ideologies and values of the Church from the State, and leaders of the State were thus educated in matters pertaining to the State. These leaders proved themselves time after time with their pragmatic intellectual capacities.

I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it's time America was run like a business.

Obama has been deliberative to a fault and an inveterate seeker of the middle ground.

Some of our finest leaders were not intellectuals at all, and I admire them enormously because they weren't. Harry Truman wasn't.

His track record of pragmatism, depth and candor all speak to a person who would find the Tea Party simplistic, opportunistic and misguided. Reagan was surrounded by some very smart people who gave him very sound advice. They were not wondering where certain countries are on the map.

I think what you expect of every candidate and ultimately of a president is to listen to the facts and to deal with things in a way that's smart and direct. I'm confident that's exactly what President [Donald] Trump will do.

I think that with Donald Trump, the United States will have a president who is not ideologically limited; that is, he is an open person, much more interested in success, efficiency, and results than political theories.

I think Donald Trump is a pragmatic sort of populist and who tell people anything in any moment that he wants them to hear, if he thinks that it's going to be to his advantage, that everything is going to reset in the general election, assuming that he is the nominee, and I think it will be interesting to watch how many people feel betrayed or conned with the game he played with the Republican Party at this point.

On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

I may not be a polished politician, but as a lifelong farmer, I know that most problems can be solved with a little common sense.