quotations about leadership
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
JAMES CALLAGHAN
The Harvard Business Review, Nov. 1, 1986
When there is danger, a good leader takes the front line; but when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back of the room.
NELSON MANDELA
O: The Oprah Magazine, Apr. 2001
Leadership is about creating the future, not predicting it.
MARSHALL SASHKIN & MOLLY G. SASHKIN
Leadership that Matters
Life is the leader's laboratory, and exemplary leaders use it to conduct as many experiments as possible. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. That's the leader's mantra. Leaders are learners. They learn from their failures as well as their successes, and they make it possible for others to do the same.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
COLIN POWELL
The Powell Principles
Leadership is defined not by the scale of the opportunity but by the quality of the response.
CHRIS LOWNEY
Heroic Leadership
Leadership is the dream made reality.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leadership Gold
A good leader makes a good follower.
BION
attributed, Day's Collacon
Leadership is the catalytic gift that energizes, directs, and empowers all the other gifts.
BILL HYBELS
Courageous Leadership
Man, like all other animals of a gregarious nature, is more inclined to follow than to lead. There are few who are endued with that impetus of soul which prompts them to stand foremost as leaders in the storming of the breach, whether it be of a fortress of stone, or the more dangerous one of public opinion, when failure in the one case may precipitate them on the sword, and in the other consign them to the scaffold.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
King's Own
A leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.
NELSON MANDELA
Long Walk to Freedom
Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.
JOHN H. ZENGER & JOSEPH FOLKMAN
The Extraordinary Leader
Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.
ALAN KEITH
attributed, The Leadership Challenge
The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Most of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation's leaders wouldn't know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Leadership", Money and Class in America
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
GEORGE S. PATTON
"Reflections and Suggestions", War As I Knew It
It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.
TOM WOLFE
"Jonestown", In Our Time
Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
speech in Gainesville, Florida, Oct. 20, 1966
And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
BIBLE
Matthew 15:14
If the experience of leadership is like being at the edge of an unfamiliar chasm, the act of leadership is building a bridge across that chasm.
KEVIN CASHMAN
Leadership from the Inside Out