Quotes About Leadership

Graff smiled a little Mona Lisa smile, if Mona Lisa had been a pudgy colonel.

The bigger a man is, the more people he serves," said the Prophet. "A small man serves himself. Bigger is to serve your family. Bigger is to serve your tribe. Then your people. Biggest of all, to serve all men, and all lands.

Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.

That's the problem with winning right from the start, though Ender. You lose friends.

That's how they think of me, too. Teacher. Legendary soldier. Not one of them. Not someone that you embrace and whisper Salaam in his ear. That only lasted while Ender still seemed a victim. Still seemed vulnerable. Now he was the master soldier, and he was completely, utterly alone.

Pueden ordenar a la Luna que se vuelva azul, pero no por eso cambiará de color. Escucha,Ender, los comandantes tienen la autoridad que tú les permitas tener. Cuanto más obedeces, más poder tienen sobre ti.

At first it was the man of real authority they noticed, but later, where everyone had authority, it was his cargo they cared to see.

They also knew that Ender trusted them to do as they judged best when he gave them no orders.

Power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it.

From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God.' 'Then who are you?' 'The personnel officer who hired God.

So plans of attack, what good are they then? We try, we do what we can, but what really counts is what you do when command breaks down.

Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?

Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reasons behind it. It wasn't to unify the rest of the group—in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else.

The other boys started to complain that pushing off walls was movement, not combat. There is no combat without movement, Ender said.

Ender Wiggin must believe that no matter what happens, no adult will ever, ever step in to help him in any way. He must believe, to the core of his soul, that he can only do what he and the other children work out for themselves. If he does not believe that, then he will never reach the peak of his abilities.

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

When the people elected a president like this one, who ran a campaign like the one he ran, it was hard to imagine what kind of scandal might bring him down.

It's a stupid leader who can't turn follower when somebody offers him a wiser course

A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.

Now she understood that someone had to end the council by declaring specifically what had been decided and what must happen next. Without absolute clarity, people would go off and dither, especially if they had doubts about the decision.

You've got to do something with your life,' said Mazer. And there it was: The tacit recognition that Ender wasn't going home. That he was never going to lead a normal life on Earth.

The PCs were willing, but the powers that be didn't want to commit troops.

My job isn't to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. 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 dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he'll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children.

They came for gossip, and he gives them responsibility.