Quotes About Leadership

The king never does an upleasent thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.

He thinks, the cardinal would have known how best to manage this. Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.

No son wishes to see his son less powerful than himself.

When no one else could see, he could see: and that is what it means to be a king.

If kings do not see you, they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.

Vadier (on Danton): "We'll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end." Danton (on Vadier): "Vadier? I'll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in.

every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works." When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

Why would I trust a man with my business, if he could not manage his own?

The cardinal used to say, Cromewll will do in a week what will take another man a year, it is not worth your while to block him or oppose him. If you reach out to grip him he will not be there, he will have ridden twenty miles while you are pulling your boots on.

And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?

Gradually, you see, our people are coming into the power they have always thought is their due.

The way I tell it, he says to Fitzwilliam, you would think that the blow on the head had improved him. That he actually set out to get it. That every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

The multitude," Cavendish says, "is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down—for the novelty of the thing.

The multitude is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down - for the novelty of the thing.

I wonder," he says, "how it can be that, though all these people think they know the king's pleasure, the king finds himself at every turn impeded." At every turn, thwarted: maddened and baffled.

As for the future, the king's desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up.

The wise councillor must always prepare for his fall.

But just as everything was going along politely, quietly and wonderfully — in poured Citizen Danton and his crew.

the wise prince is not always the most popular prince;

If a king cannot have a son, if he cannot do that, it matters not what else he can do. The victories, the spoils of victory, the just laws he makes, the famous courts he holds, these are as nothing.' It is true. To maintain the stability of the realm: this is the compact a king makes with his people. If he cannot have a son of his own, he must find an heir, name him before his country falls into doubt and confusion, faction and conspiracy. And who can Henry name, that will not be laughed

his greatest ambition for England is this: the prince and his commonwealth should be in accord. He doesn't want the kingdom to be run like Walter's house in Putney, with fighting all the time and the sound of banging and shrieking day and night. He wants it to be a household where everybody knows what they have to do, and feels safe doing it. He says to Rice, 'Stephen Gardiner says I should write a book.

It is the glory of the men who have worked with Cromwell that instead of merely cursing the vermin they have patched, they have mended, they have stretched a point to replace a gnawed vowel; they have been ready to substitute a digested phrase with a clause that will help the crown. . .

Every absent day he loses advantage. If kings do not see you they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.