Quotes About Leadership

Day after day we read about them, each new man more brilliant than the last. They were not just an all-star first team, but an all-star second team as well. There were counts kept on how many Rhodes scholars there were in the Administration, how many books by members of the new Administration (even the Postmaster, J. Edward Day, had written a novel, albeit a bad one).

Theodore Sorensen wrote for [Robert Kennedy's 1968] announcement speech: "At stake is not simply the leadership of our party, and even our own country, it is our right to the moral leadership of this planet." The sentence absolutely appalled all the younger Robert Kennedy advisers, who felt it smacked of just the kind of attitude which had gotten us into Vietnam. Nonetheless, despite their protests, it stayed in the speech.

When I was at Oldsmobile," he said, "there was something I learned that I've never forgotten. There was an old guy there who was an engineer, and he had been at GM a long time, and he gave me some advice. He told me, whatever you do, don't let GM do it first." That was it, Davis thought later—the Detroit line, the symbol of the protected industry. Don't let GM do it first, let the other guy make the early, expensive mistakes.

Anybody is a damn fool if he actually seeks to be President," he told friends. "You give up four of the very best years of your life. Lord knows it's a sacrifice. Some people think there is a lot of power and glory attached to the job. On the contrary the very workings of a democratic system see to it that the job has very little power.

his was a profession in which a good leader constantly had to adapt to new weapons, whether he liked them or not

His counterpart at Chevy, a man named Bill Holler, had once gathered all of his regional salesmen around a brand-new model, opened the door, looked at them all long and solemnly, and then slammed the door as hard as he could. "Boys," he announced, "I've just slammed the door on the best goddam car in the world"—and a huge cheer went up.

Mr. Ford, here is our new plant," Lord Perry, who was the head of Ford in Europe, said proudly. "Where is the water?" the old man asked. "There isn't any water," Lord Perry replied. "Well, let's get out of here," Ford said. "I don't even want to look at it." That had ended the ceremony. Ford had driven off, and they had torn down the plant and moved it to a deep-water site.

Williams had a very shrewd sense of how much heat the organism could take at any given time;

He was very good, it turned out, at outlining the flaws in the government as long as someone else was in charge of the government.

The Kennedys demanded loyalty out of confidence, Johnson demanded it out of insecurity.

Nothing appalled Deming more than the idea of the interchangeable manager. "What is the motivation and purpose of men like this?" he would say with contempt. "Do they even know what they do anymore? What do they produce?" All they knew about was numbers, not product. All they thought about was maximum profit, not excellence of product.

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

Events," wrote George Ball, paraphrasing Emerson "are in the saddle, and ride mankind.

he sensed that his own reticence would make it easier to restrain others.

Dean Rusk was a man without a shadow.

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life.

It was the responsibility of a senior fireman to teach as well as to do.

the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal facility which the team exuded, and true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam.

Gen. Matthew Ridgeway "intended not to impose his will on his men, but to allow the men under him to find something in themselves that would make them more confident, more purposeful fighting men. It was their confidence in themselves that would make them fight well, he believed, not so much their belief in him. His job was to keep them to find that quality in themselves.

Up to then there had been something of a gentleman's agreement among those who might be called The Good Journalists of Washington that the Kennedy Administration was one of excellence, that it was for good things and against bad things, and that when it did lesser things it was only in self-defense, and in order that it might do other good things.

The pastoral ministry cannot be employer-driven, trend-driven or task-driven. Pastoral ministry must be following Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ called me to this work, and following him must be integral to realizing his calling.

People are more easily led than driven.

Volcker, Reagan, Thatcher, and Deng Xaioping all took minority arguments that had long been in circulation and made them majoritarian (though in no case without a protracted struggle).

It's all very well to have a kind heart, but kind hearts don't rule castles.