Leadership Judgment Quotes

I was among the people in the Superdome. I knew what was going on every minute. I did not have air conditioning nor shower facilities. I made decisions based upon facts and not what I thought was going to happen. So history will judge me based upon those actions.

A statesman is judged by results. If his policy fails he goes. It may be unfair, but there is a kind of rough justice about it.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. The public does not fully understand the world into which it is going. Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not are ultimately judged failures, even though they may be popular at the moment.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

The day of reckoning is not just coming for Saddam Hussein. It's coming for the anti-war movement.

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president - and the president alone - who always makes the final call.

The first impression that one gets of a ruler and his ability is from seeing the men that he has about him.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

I'm a big fan of Tony Blair. I'm not saying that I think his judgment has always been right, but I look at him as a person.

First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.

Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether... the decisions I made made sense.

I think I have the skills. I'm a great judge of talent. I just know basketball.

Men and kings must be judged in the testing moments of their lives. Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

I've said this before and I'm very proud of it, that when it comes to judgment, having run a hard race against Senator [Barack] Obama at the time, he turned to me to be secretary of State. And when it comes to the biggest counterterrorism issues that we faced in this administration, namely whether or not to go after bin Laden, I was at that table, I was exercising my judgment to advise the president on what to do, on that, on Iran, on Russia on China, on a whole raft of issues.

while the executive should give every possible value to the information of the specialist, no executive should abdicate thinking on any subject because of the expert. The expert's information or opinion should not be allowed automatically to become a decision. On the other hand, full recognition should be given to the part the expert plays in decision making.

... men of whom the people have had time to form a judgment, and with respect to whom they will not be liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which like transient meteors sometimes mislead as well as dazzle.

I've developed a much greater respect for our politicians and every high-tech CEO. It's very easy to read about the things they did that you, of course, would have avoided in hindsight.

I'm going to keep talking about what I would do as president, the experience that I bring, the temperament and judgment that led President [Barack] Obama to ask me to be secretary of state after we ran a really hard primary against each other. It's funny to me, because when I have a position, whether it's first lady, or senator, or secretary of state, and I'm doing the work, I'm really quite popular.