Quotes About Leadership

Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them.

efficiency never has to go begging for advancement; the man that masters his trade goes to the front.

If we wish to appeal to the best, if we wish to draw the best out of others, we must look for the best in them; we must think the best of them; we must trust them; we must believe in them. The man who smiles and sees the best in everything and everybody is the man who draws the best out of others. He attracts others and wins out in life, while the gloomy, sour face repels everyone.

Where is the man who will save us? We want a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man—it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it. —Alexander Dumas.

to inspire his men, wont about among the plague-stricken soldiers, touching their wounds with his bare hands. He said that the man who had no fear would never be stricken with the plague. he believed that the mind is master of the body. If there was over a believer in the almost omnipotent power of the mind and of the will, it was Napoleon.

Everybody cursed the Bolsheviks but nobody was prepared to do anything about them.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God. Then who are you? The personnel officer who hired God.

I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.

If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

You made them hate me. Said Ender So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be. -Graff

What am I now, Alai? Still good. At what? At--anything. There's a million soldiers who'd follow you to the end of the universe. I don't want to go to the end of the universe. So where do you want to go? They'll follow you. I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don't know where it is.

People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.

Colonel Graff: We won! That's all that matters. Ender Wiggin: No. The way we win matters.

That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

The have influence, but no power. In my experience, influence is power.

I thought commanders could order anything." They can order the moon to turn blue, too, but it doesn't happen. Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.

Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like--history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

It didn't matter he was brilliant and dedicated and good. He was a child. He was young. No he isn't, thought Ender. Small, yes. Bur Bean has been through a battle with a whole army depending on him and on the soldiers that he led. and he performed splendidly, and the won. There's no youth in that. No childhood.

A good commander, thought Ender, doesn't have to make stupid threats.