Executive Influence Quotes

[Then a congressman:] Were I President, I should desire the legislation of the country to rest with Congress, uninfluenced by the executive in its origin or progress.

The President has to persuade Congress to do what they do not want to do.

But here's the bottom line, the president of the United States, he controls the bully pulpit, he can talk about anything he wants to talk about.

The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.

It's pretty hard to say no when a vice president-elect and a president-elect ask you to be part of the national team.

A president with a pen in their hand is a very powerful person.

It's my experience at Fiat and, now, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles that when there is a very strong CEO, it's a good thing to be chairman.

I will not attempt to show that it would be a great evil to increase the patronage of the Executive. It is already enormously great, as every man of every party must acknowledge, if he would candidly express his sentiments.

I'm willing to have two directors on the DuPont board, me being one of them.

I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch a directive. That is institutionally how we have always operated. I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations [On Hillary Clinton].

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

It's often said of American politics that it's a huge juggernaut and the president can change the direction by two or three degrees in either direction, but not much more. In fact, I think the president's power is limited, much more than the prime minister in England.

When it comes to the media, the Congress is no match for the President.

A business, successful or not, is merely a reflection of the character of its leadership.

As a former CEO and senior executive, there was a time when I did not quite understand the profound impact a CEO has on the culture of a company, even though I always knew culture was important.

You serve the country, and you help the President. If the President wants you to leave, you know, you are two corridors down.

If I can impact an executive and his or her team, I can help to change the culture of an organization.

Your culture will only ever be as healthy as the senior leader wants it to be.

CEOs pretty much pick the boards that give them salaries and bonuses. That's one of the reasons why the CEO-to-payment [ratio] has so sharply escalated in this country in contrast to Europe. (They're similar societies and it's bad enough there, but here we're in the stratosphere. ] There's no particular reason for it.

I think the reason I was able to get the jobs I did is because I worked for some very strong, self-possessed filmmakers who wouldn't listen to the executive-suited wisdom, and they believed in me from director to actor. Not from salesman to commodity.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

Somebody we never talk about is Stephanie McMahon. She is such a huge power influence in our company. She is always pushing us to go the limit, and she doesn't take much credit for what she's done.

I've just been elected and right now we'll have a honeymoon with Congress... I'll have a good chance to get my program through.... But after I make my recommendations, I'm going to lose the power and authority I have because that's what happened to President Woodrow Wilson, to President Roosevelt and to Truman and to Kennedy. Every day that I'm in office ... I'll be losing part of my ability to be influential.... So I want you guys to get off your asses and do everything possible to get ... my program passed as soon as possible, before the aura and halo that surround me disappear.

Normally what happens in a new presidency is the president has a big agenda, and Congress is full of people with human weaknesses. And so the president indulges the human weaknesses of members of Congress in order to pass his agenda. This time it's the other way around. Donald Trump does not have much of an agenda. Congress burns with this intense Republican agenda and so does Congress that has to put up with the human weaknesses of the president in order to get a signature on the things it desperately wants to pass.

Leadership responsibility: If you own a biz, you're the head of the org. Good or bad, your company will LOOK and ACT like you do.