Quotes About Leadership

I believe that managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly, you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.

I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

Teachers who are accountable to principals who are, in turn, accountable to school communities are likely to be more professionally 'grounded' and less susceptible to avant garde fashions in curriculum and pedagogy. School

In the business world, management is always viewed in terms of productivity. Why? Because productivity is the key to the success of the organization and to your future as a manager.

I was radicalised by office and I quickly realised that just getting rid of one government and replacing it with another one in which I had office did not necessarily change anything. A most vivid example was when marchers shouted, 'Thatcher! Thatcher! Out, Out, Out!' only to discover that they had elected Blair! Blair! and little had changed.

I have five questions that I ask people who have power, and I recommend them to the House. If I see someone who is powerful, be it a traffic warden, Rupert Murdoch, the head of a trade union or a Member of Parliament, I ask myself these five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you?" That last question is crucial.

An educated, healthy & confident nation is harder to govern

The Prime Minister keeps me on around here because I make him look good.

Clement Attlee, who looked like a sadistic sanitary inspector...

On the National Executive sat Charles Clarke, looking like a rather manky chimpanzee with his unkempt beard, jug ears and his air of surly aggression.

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

No sentient political party goes into an election with a leader who has a net approval rating of 40 percent. The takeover of the Labour Party by the far left turned it into a glorified protest movement, with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government.

Well, America is never a laughingstock because it's too powerful for that. But people do want clarity and consistency.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.

In government you carry each hope each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

The single hardest thing for a practicing politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don't give politics a first thought all day long.