Quotes About Leadership

Labour in power?

politicians aren't concerned with justice being done, they're concerned with justice seeming to be done as a result of their keen-eyed vigilance.

The politics of the last twenty years in Britain are liars' politics. The problem is we are ruled by the weak and the small-minded, who are too stupid to know that they are weak and small-minded.

you were better making history than studying it.

Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.

Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?

There is no Master but the Master," he said, "and QT-1 is his prophet.

You are a practical man, Elijah. You do not moon romantically over Earth's past, despite your healthy interest in it. Nor do you stubbornly embrace the City culture of Earth's present day. We felt that people such as yourself were the ones that could lead Earthmen to the stars once more.

I wouldn't want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done.

To [the government] it didn't matter what happened to the American people as long as america in the abstract was kept strong.

Come, captain, we had no leadership worthy of the name then, and we faced the cleverest opponent, the heaviest armor, the strongest force of all. Yet we won by the inevitability of history.

An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched.

So it is only the combination of strong Emperor and strong general that can harm the Foundation; for a strong Emperor cannot be dethroned easily, and a strong general is forced to turn outwards, past the frontiers.

Señor Norman Muller, debo informarle, en nombre del presidente de los Estados Unidos, de que le han escogido para representar al electorado norteamericano el martes 4 de noviembre de 2008.

Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing.

The men in this station survive by virtue of their jellyfish quality. There isn't one who would stand against him. Trying to rally the others to put pressure on Hallam would be like asking strands of cooked spaghetti to come to attention.

Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, nor even particularly incongruous.

That's why I must be mayor and high priest. I'm the only man who knows how to fight the crisis." Jael swallowed dryly. "How? What are you going to do?" "Nothing." Jael smiled uncertainly. "Really! All of that!" But Mallow's answer was incisive. "When I'm boss of this Foundation, I'm going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.

Men who rule by tricks of the mind need not necessarily be men in obvious power.

And a woman striding among them like an equal.

When I'm boss of this Foundation, I'm going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.

Young man, my powers, on paper, are enormous, but I can only succeed when the public is willing to let me. Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.

El caso es que la humanidad no está distinguiéndose demasiado en la administración de los asuntos terrestres. Puede que llegue el día en que tengamos que hacernos humildemente a un lado y dejar las cosas en manos de quien las sepa llevar mejor. Y si no nos hacemos a un lado, es posible que llegue el Supercomputador y nos aparte por las malas.