Quotes About Leadership

there is no humane way to rule people against their will.

When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear

Katrina was not unforeseeable. It was the result of a political structure that subcontracts its responsibility to private contractors and abdicates its responsibility altogether. —Harry Belafonte, American musician and civil rights activist, September 20052

As the political scientist Michael Wolfe puts it, "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well." He adds, "As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster."30

Looking ahead to coming disasters, ecological and political, we often assume that we are all going to face them together, that what's needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I'm not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it.

To build a truly inclusive movement, there needs to be a truly inclusive vision that starts with and is led by the most brutalized and excluded.

In December 1994, Yeltsin did what so many desperate leaders have done throughout history to hold on to power: he started a war. His national security chief, Oleg Lobov, had confided to a legislator, "We need a small, victorious war to raise the president's ratings," and the defense minister predicted that his army could defeat the forces in the breakaway republic of Chechnya in a matter of hours—a cakewalk. 59

commonly held, and imagines corporate CEOs

Indeed, the failure of our political leaders to even attempt to ensure a safe future for us represents a crisis of legitimacy of almost unfathomable proportions.

It seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.

Temeraire-- Never fear; I am going; the Son of Heaven will not tolerate delays, and Barham gives me leave. Allegiance will carry us! Pray eat something --L.

We are not going to be herded anywhere we do not like," [Temeraire] said, dangerously, "by Napoleon or by your admirals; and if you like to ask the other dragons of the Corps to try it, I expect they will see at once how very foolish it is, and if not, I will explain it to them, and I daresay they will join us instead.

If Napoleon can seek to ascend all the thrones of Europe, I suppose we may go dragging them out from under him

Think on it with a clear head. Lords and kings often don't ask for what they want, but they can afford to have bad manners.

De Draak keerde zich weer naar me om. 'Je bent er dus in geslaagd manschappen hierheen te halen,' merkte hij sarcastisch op.

In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival--or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.

But my husband and I were not reassured by the Nurse Ratched–type comforting language, and we were astonished at Governor Cuomo's dicta. Since we had both lived in war zones and conflict areas, we knew that commerce was never closed, even in the worst crises. People needed to keep making their livings in order to survive the crisis, and the economy needed to be sustained in order for the community to survive the crisis.

the world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.

Every great leader of the past, whose record I have examined, was beset by difficulties and met with temporary defeat before 'arriving

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

The leaders in every walk of life decide quickly, and firmly. That is the major reason why they are leaders. The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.

Employers who understand human nature, get the best there is in men, not by criticism, but by constructive suggestion.

The great leaders of business, industry, finance, and the great artists, musicians, poets, and writers became great, because they developed the faculty of creative imagination.