Quotes About Leadership

When you are led by values, it doesn't cost your business, it helps your business.

The other men came in and somehow Lou got the same order across to them. We all went to comply—like so many dumb sheep.

A wonderful truth engulfed her. She was safe. They were all still safe. As long as they followed the ways of God, they had nothing to fear. He was holy—but he was just. And as long as they followed their godly leaders—like Peter, like Stephen—they would remain protected and on the right path.

He says that other men can run their lives in this order: God, wife, work; but his has to be God, work, wife, and he won't ask a woman to take the lesser position.

The special issue was heavy reading: two men who ran for president, plus scientists, political activists, economists, historians, and futurists. I believed we also must always listen to the poets—actors, comedians, musical artists, and writers—for they are scholars of human nature and often have the gift of prophecy.

We don't need leaders who wear flag pins in their lapel, but rather men and women who have the guts to tell us the truth.

Fanatics don't choose to stop blinding themselves. His Lordship's more at risk of becoming the figure-head steered by the needs of the mob. What man who leads a pack of followers isn't?

You always did like to run things, never mind your crafty knack for making everyone believe that somebody else was in charge.

Since you refused the good grace to die on delivery, Rathain has got a living prince.

But a parcel of walled soil does not make the heart of a ruler or define the nobility of a people!

populists have no problem with representation as long as they are the representatives; similarly, they are fine with elites as long as they are the elites leading the people.

populists are not generally "against institutions," and they are not destined to self-destruct once in power. They only oppose those institutions that, in their view, fail to produce the morally (as opposed to empirically) correct political outcomes. And that happens only when they are in opposition. Populists in power are fine with institutions—which is to say, their institutions.

Populists are, after all, often deemed to be heirs of the Jacobins.

No one asked Jamey to be the policeman and pastor of egos. Why does he think this is his obligation?

The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put.

Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a few minutes after the two leaders first set eyes on each other. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history's largest ransom in return for a promise to free him. After the ransom—enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet—was delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.

With no other accessible islands to colonize, the Moriori had to remain in the Chathams, and to learn how to get along with each other. They did so by renouncing war, and they reduced potential conflicts from overpopulation by castrating some male infants. The result was a small, unwarlike population with simple technology and weapons, and without strong leadership or organization.

society's structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.

One of the conclusions that we saw emerging from our discussion of Maya kings, Greenland Norse chieftains, and Easter Island chiefs is that, in the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.

The kings and priests of ancient Sumer wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to record numbers of sheep owed in taxes, not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots.

Commoners had to prostrate themselves before high-ranking chiefs. All the members of chiefly lineages, bureaucrats, and some craft specialists were freed from the work of food production.

Todas las historias militares que glorifican a los grandes generales simplifican en exceso la prosaica verdad: los vencedores de las guerras del pasado no fueron siempre los ejércitos que disponían de los mejores generales y las mejores armas, sino que a menudo fueron simplemente aquellos que portaban los gérmenes más desagradables para transmitirlos a sus enemigos.

China's leaders who mandated family planning long before overpopulation in China could reach Rwandan levels.

Part of the solution to that problem was for one person, the chief, to exercise a monopoly on the right to use force.