Quotes About Leadership

Hitler no doubt killed more people than Genghis, but he had twentieth-century technology at his disposal.

It took from 1967 to 2003—over three decades—to build the big men. It took a decade—2003 to 2013—to destroy them. I suspect a new generation of big men will return. No people can tolerate chaos forever. Dictators will offer a way out and many of the exhausted and brutalized people of the Middle East will accept them, and I suspect Washington will as well.

To be effective, demonstrators must pick the right square and make it the center of their activities.

The only people who believe in straight roads are generals & mail coach drivers.

It was a part he felt himself feeling his way into, and the longer it went on, the more the men around him confirmed him in his role. It was as if they were willing him into being, as though there had to be a Big Fella, and, having desperate need of such, their growing respect, their whispered asides, their opinion of him - all this trapped him into behaving as everything he knew he was not. As if rather than him leading them by example they were leading him through adulation.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him sing opera.

F-rated Natchez High, with 700 students, had four principals and four assistant principals, all making between $50,000 and $82,000 a year plus benefits. By contrast, the A-rated public high school in Tupelo, Mississippi, with 2,100 students, had just one principal, working with one assistant principal.

What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.

Assuming you rise to the top, please remember: what made you great may not be appropriate for the next generation.

If Jellicoe had suffered overwhelming defeat, nothing could have saved the Allies. As Churchill confirmed, he was "the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon.

If you don't know the men at your back by name, don't be surprised if they won't follow you into battle. On the other hand, don't be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.

Men were like blades, they would all break sooner or later, you included. But you looked around at the men you led, and in their eyes you saw what kind of steel you had to hand, how it had been forged and tempered, what blows, if any, it would take.

Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash

You can't talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on.

In the end, she realized, he had successfully invited them all to die simply by promising to do it with them. It was all they would ask of any commander.

They tell you to save the ship at all costs. No one ever talks about whether the passengers and crew deserve all that effort.

Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters.

the end, she realized, he had successfully invited them all to die simply by promising to do it with them. It was all they would ask of any commander.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." --H. L. Mencken

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'." — Theodore Roosevelt This is a famous quote that has been widely reprinted;

Melletin jumped up on a barrel beside Ramil. Brigardians, are you with the Dark Prince? Aye! shouted his countrymen. What about you other men? Ramil asked, looking across the crowd of faces drawn from all parts of the Empire. The slave who had challenged him took one look at Yelena, then raised his hand. I'm in. It seems you might know what you're doing after all. Ramil grinned. I can't promise that--but I can promise that I'll buy you a drink if we're still alive by the end of tomorrow!

Men are sheep. Where one goes, the rest will soon follow. -Lady Whistledown

It's a recurrent delusion that a change of government will make a difference.

Gentlemen, Admiral Lord Nelson wrote, of the officers aft on the quarterdeck and the seamen of the fo'c'sle: 'Aft the most honour—forward the better man!'" The