A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the difficulty leaders face in determining the right course of action rather than simply executing it.
Lyndon B. Johnson's quote highlights the complex nature of leadership, where making the right decision may be more challenging than taking action. It suggests that ethical clarity and moral judgment are crucial for leaders, and the ability to discern the right path is a significant burden they carry. This underscores the importance of wisdom and insight in leadership roles.
In practice
During a keynote speech on leadership at a conference.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
The King is only fond of words, and cannot translate them into deeds.
That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
It is now, more than ever, necessary that political leaders be outstanding for honesty, integrity and commitment to the common good.
To get the best coaching outcomes, always have your 1-on-1's on your employee's turf not yours. In your office the truth hides.
The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
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