David Gergen Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Leadership is about calling people to do things beyond themselves.

It’s easy to confuse motion with progress.

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.

There's a normal tendency in the campaign, during a crisis, for the country to rally around the White House. vThat 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.

We know from past history that when young people vote for one party a couple of times, they tend to vote for that party during their adult lifetimes in disproportionate numbers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you look at history, every major realignment in our politics is a joining together of a new generation and emerging technologies. Obama has been a pioneer in joining the powers of the Internet with the principles of community organizing. Howard Dean used the Internet for meetups - Obama used it to create a movement.

I think it's particularly raw coming the day after the Electoral College, and Bill Clinton, he's taking this hard. It's been very hard to him. He thought his wife was gonna win. He believed she should have won. I think he believes, basically, it was an unfair result.

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