Quotes About Leadership

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.

When you disarm your subjects you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you.

A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and it organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things.

it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.

A conspiracy, in short, is based on small groups with inherently competing interests. At some point in the evolution of the competition between two or more groups (and in some cases, within subversive groups), there are rumors or allegations made of sinister behavior or a secretive plot developed by the members or the leadership of the groups. Occasionally, the groups will have diametrically opposed goals and this leads to further subversion.

Ney too was a legend to his men. He commanded the camp at Montreuil.

Davout commanded the Ambleteuse camp under strict discipline.

For a man who had been in action 120 times by the age of thirty-nine, Nelson was bearing up well,

But everyone on the British side knew Nelson had arrived.

VILLENEUVE HOLDS A COUNCIL OF WAR

The council of war took place aboard the Bucentaure on 8 October.

Napoleon decided to wait. Spring 1805 was the time.