Quotes About Leadership

He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.

Fools multiply when wise men are silent.

Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great...

There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

A blind pursuit of cheap popularity has nothing to do with revolution." [ Political Report of the National Executive Committee to the forty-ninth A.N.C. National Conference , Bloemfontein, South Africa, 17 December 1994]

I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.

all remained loyal to him, not because they always agreed with him, but because the regent listened to and respected different opinions.

To be the father of a nation is a great honor, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.

I always remember the regent's axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind. It

our father came back and he left us alone because he has now become the father of the nation.

As Chief Luthuli said, 'When the women begin to take an active part in the struggle, no power on earth can stop us from achieving freedom in our lifetime.

No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others

I am your servant…. It is not the individuals that matter, but the collective….

un líder es como un pastor que permanece detrás del rebaño y permite que los más ágiles vayan por delante, tras lo cual, los demás les siguen sin darse cuenta de que en todo momento están siendo dirigidos desde detrás.

grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan

I believed that I would become a counsellor to the Thembu king,

Of course you cannot know a man completely, his character, his principles, sense of judgement, not till he's shown his colors, run the people, making laws. Experience, there's the test.

Een leider, zegt hij, is als een herder. Hij blijft achter de kudde en laat de behendigste voorlopen, waarop de anderen volgen, zonder te beseffen dat ze steeds vanuit de achterhoede worden geleid.

My bans extended to meetings of all kinds, not only political ones. I could not, for example, attend my son's birthday party. I was prohibited from talking to more than one person at a time. This was part of a systematic effort by the government to silence, persecute and immobilize the leaders of those fighting apartheid and was the first of a series of bans on me that continued with brief intervals of freedom until the time I was deprived of all freedom some years later.

A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds, and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the result.

But in Johannesburg I found that many of the most outstanding leaders had never been to university at all.