David Gergen quotes:

When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.

Ronald Reagan is clearly to television what Franklin Roosevelt was to radio.

One cannot underestimate how widely admired Tom Daschle is in Washington for his integrity.

If you've got some news that you don't want to get noticed, put it out Friday afternoon 4:00 pm.

Leadership is about calling people to do things beyond themselves.

I think there's some generational difference between some of the older members of the press and this younger president [Bill Clinton]. I think the older members are not quite on the same wave length, and in general. I think it's been very devastating to the president.

How in heaven's name can a nation with a $1 trillion surplus threaten so much scientific research so vital to its future?

We've seen the hubris. And now we're seeing the scandals.

Leadership is a journey. Each one of us has to take our own path, and get there our own way.

The proudest moment for [a teacher of leaders] is seeing not what students learn but what they do.

There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.

Morality in government begins with officials using words as honestly as possible to describe the truth.

How in heaven's name can a nation with a $1 trillion surplus threaten so much scientific research so vital to its future?"

We know that second terms have historically been marred by hubris and by scandal.

A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.

Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way.

At the heart of leadership is the leader's relationship with followers. People will entrust their hopes and dreams to another person only if they think the other is a reliable vessel.

It's very, very hard to speak truth to power when the truth is unpleasant. I think it's one of the toughest things especially a young person has to do and the only way you can do it is if you're willing to walk out the door if he doesn't take your advice. Or if you're willing to walk out the door if he goes over the line.

We are making politics a spectator sport in which our only duty is to vote somebody into office and then retire to the grandstands.

There's a normal tendency in the campaign, during a crisis, for the country to rally around the White House. That may help Al Gore in this campaign, but on the other hand, George W. Bush handled himself so well the other night on foreign policy that I think it fortified him just before this crisis broke.

Ronald Reagan rebuilt the American presidency; it was in trouble when he came into office as an institution, and he did through his communications and through his own inspiration, and his principles. I think he did lift our spirits about, and convince us that once again that the future of the best, our best days were always ahead of us.

I don't have any problem with a reporter or a news person who says the President is uninformed on this issue or that issue. I don't think any of us would challenge that. I do have a problem with the singular focus on this, as if that's the only standard by which we ought to judge a president. What we learned in the last administration was how little having an encyclopedic grasp of all the facts has to do with governing.