Lao Tzu

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Why is the tao so valuable? Because it is everywhere, and everyone can use it. This is why those who seek will find.

If you aspire to be a leader of your own country, you must speak your own language, for God’s sake.

But real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing that the time has come to move beyond waiting to doing.

The challenge of leadership is to create change and facilitate growth.

You do your job, you keep your job. Do it well, you get a better job.

It’s easy to demonise people, you’re usually wrong about it, people are nicer than you think.

Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

Respect people with less power then you. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there.

A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don’t drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground – but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well.

I think people should be nicer to each other

I have a very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning, and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That’s how you build a first-class operation.

The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts–against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

You will launch many projects, but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.

I feel like the thing we can do is celebrate people doing great work and create more cultural momentum and awareness that this is an important thing in the world. So when the next economic crisis hits and people are talking about where to cut from the budget, science isn’t the thing.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.