You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.
Interpretation
Good leadership requires honorable and committed individuals in public office.
The quote highlights the importance of having ethical and capable individuals in politics, asserting that while it may not be a surety for success, striving for such ideals is crucial. It emphasizes the role of integrity and commitment in governance, suggesting that the quality of leaders significantly impacts society and political outcomes.
In practice
A motivational speech about political engagement during a community meeting.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.
Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.
When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.
No government prospers by saying, 'I don't need to do anything. Just by being there, we have made the country thrive.'
Systems, coaches, and directors or club presidents do not win games - players do, they are the only people who can make a significant difference once that game starts.
I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, and to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken this government.
We must not let ourselves be seen as rushing around the world looking for arguments... Nor should we let ourselves be seen as ignoring allies, disillusioning friends, thinking only of ourselves in the most narrow terms. That is not how we survived the 20th century. Nor will it serve in the 21st.
The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.
A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group - that's teamwork.
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
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