Leadership Quotes

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.

Niccolo Machiavelli, source date

True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.

Robert Townsend

A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.

Robert Townsend

The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor.

Orison Swett Marden

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which he leads us. What indemnification is one great man for populations of pigmies! Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We have become underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help;- other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even, I pray you, let me never hear that man's name again. They cry up the virtues of George Washington,- Damn George Washington! is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and confutation. But it is human nature's indispensable defense. The centripetence augments the centrifugence. We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complet

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus

He that cannot obey, cannot command.

Benjamin Franklin

Among my activities was membership in the Boy Scouts I rose each year through the ranks, eventually achieving the rank of Eagle Scout and undertaking leadership roles in the organization.

Frederick Reines

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Thomas Sowell

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

Lewis H. Lapham

Germany must be a country which generates political ideas and leadership, which is capable of compromise, which is sovereign and yet knows that it needs its partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

Horst Koehler

I took a gamble to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.

Michelle Bachelet

I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.

Anna Deavere Smith

We're in a leadership position in sports. People look up to the National Football League.

Roger Goodell

I believe that we as the leader of the Free World must provide important leadership on the ethical parameters, the ethical constraints that this research requires.

Ron Kind

The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.

John Olver

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

Madeleine Albright

There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.

Robert M. Gates

Among the blind the one eyed is king.

Proverb

An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than a an army of lions commanded by a stag.

Proverb