A Selfless Leader

Selfless Leader. You don't hear those words much these days in the context of government. It was nice to hear them associated with President Ford. To honor him I am posting some of his quotes:

“I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.”

“I promise my fellow citizens only this: To uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and…to do the very best that I can for America.”

“I am not a saint, and I am sure I have done things I might have done better or differently, or not at all. I have also left undone things that I should have done. But I believe and hope that I have been honest with myself and with others, that I have been faithful to my friends and fair to my opponents, and that I have tried my very best to make this great Government work for the good of all Americans.”

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

“We are bound together by the most powerful of all ties, our fervent love for freedom and independence, which knows no homeland but the human heart.”

“As we are a nation under God, so I am sworn to uphold our laws with the help of God.”

“Some people equate civility with weakness and compromise with surrender. I strongly disagree. I come by my political pragmatism the hard way, for my generation paid a very heavy price in resistance to the century we had of some extremists -- to the dictators, the utopians, the social engineers who are forever condemning the human race for being all too human.”

“The ultimate test of leadership is not the polls you take, but the risks you take. In the short run, some risks prove overwhelming. Political courage can be self-defeating. But the greatest defeat of all would be to live without courage, for that would hardly be living at all.”
Read more from the Associated Press here in their story entitled "Ford remembered as steady, selfless".

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this post on Pres. Ford. He seemed like a very decent man and its unfortunate that the timing and reason behind his presidency was surrounded with negativity.

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