quotations about leadership
If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it.
BILL MAULDIN
The Brass Ring
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
The best leaders turn their followers into leaders, realizing that the journey ahead requires many guides.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
A Leader's Legacy
If becoming a high performing organization is the destination, leadership is the engine.
KEN BLANCHARD
Leading at a Higher Level
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
Leadership is taken, not given.
LOUISE STERLING & SUE DAVIDOFF
The Courage to Lead
Because our desire for a coherent vision of the world is bottomless, our hunger for leadership is insatiable, too. Leaders make the world more sensible, but never sensible enough.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
The right man comes at the right time.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Leadership is the outward expression of our inner character.
DICK ABEL
The DNA of Leadership
Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
ANDRE MAUROIS
"The Art of Leadership", The Art of Living
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
Little leading makes much following.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Good leadership is largely invisible.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leading from the Lockers
The man fit to command may be compared with the architect, who adjusts the plan and directs its execution. His skill must extend to every part of the work; that of his workmen is limited by their respective tasks.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome