Gergen Quotes & Sayings

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

The pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. — C.S. Lewis

Trust remains the coin of the realm in politics. A President who is trusted, by the people, by the congress, by the press, by foreign countries, is a President who can get a lot of good things done. — David Gergen

Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition. Without this empathy there can be no genuine dialogue, and we as individuals and nations will remain isolated and alien, segregated and fragmented. — Azar Nafisi

You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that's just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy. — Jessi Klein

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. — David Gergen

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. — David Gergen

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. — David Gergen

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

The pirates left the boat in the Thames, next to the Palace of Westminster. They deliberately parked across two disabled spaces, because that kind of behaviour was pretty much the whole point of being a pirate. — Gideon Defoe

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

I couldn't have gotten this far without my beautiful parents. I'm also very lucky to have the best friends that I do. — Nicole Anderson

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

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

I try to go through my reads and then, if I have the option to run, I do run. — Robert Griffin III

Science - or the products of science like technology - is just a way of achieving something real, something that happens, something that works. — Richard Dawkins

After the Republican Party did everything that Colin Powell says it needs to do to grow, and nominated the very kind of candidate he wanted in 2008, what did Powell do? He endorsed Obama! So according to the Drive-Bys and David Gergen, Republicans should let somebody who campaigned and voted for Obama, tell us how to build our party. — Rush Limbaugh

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. — John Updike

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

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. — David Gergen

Don't worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. - HOWARD THURMAN — Christopher Gergen

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. — David Gergen

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. — David Gergen

Of all types of birds, birds of prey have always fascinated people. — Jim Knight

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

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

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

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

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. — David Gergen

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. — David Gergen

Leadership is about calling people to do things beyond themselves. — David Gergen

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

I don't usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds. — Robert Doisneau

She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still. — Toni Morrison

Something - exactly like a finger and thumb it felt - nipped my nose. — H.G.Wells

You might sit at your computer, thinking you own and control your own ideas but it doesn't take long before you realize that you're part of a bigger network. You're fully wrapped up in relationships out of which you come and in which you participate. To look at yourself as a single being is absurd. The new way to look at it is, 'I'm connected, therefore I am.' — Kenneth J Gergen

Black women ... work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going ... They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity. — Wilma Rudolph

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. — David Gergen

Nothing is real unless people agree that it is. — Mary Gergen

It's easy to confuse motion with progress. — David Gergen