Quotes About Leadership

Undeterred by these extreme gyrations, both Rockefeller and Andrews wanted to borrow heavily and expand, while Clark favored a more circumspect approach.

Hamilton's achievements were never matched because he was present at the government's inception, when he could draw freely on a blank slate. If Washington was the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.

Even as a young man, Rockefeller was extremely composed in a crisis. In this respect, he was a natural leader: The more agitated others became, the calmer he grew.

I do not know of any firm to suggest at the moment, but why not run them ourselves?

The young Washington could be alternately fawning and assertive, appealingly modest and distressingly pushy.

Hamilton sketched out this phantom force in microscopic detail, producing comprehensive charts for regiments, battalions, and companies. In a typical passage, Hamilton was to write, "A company is subdivided equally into two platoons, a platoon into two sections and a section into two squads, a squad consisting of four files of three or six files of two."89 He assigned ranks to officers, set up recruiting stations, stocked arsenals with ammunition, and drew up numerous regulations.

When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.

that he alone started and stopped panics.

On March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for his second term as president

Rockefeller handled people adroitly and wasn't the cold curmudgeon of later myth.

Washington grew as a leader because he engaged in searching self-criticism.

He never told us what to do or not to do.

Whatever his own discomfort, Rockefeller made an excellent impression.

George Washington was always the maestro of eloquent silences.

I would do what I thought best.

Eliza never lost her temper, never raised her voice, never scolded anyone—a style of understated authority that John inherited.

Julia would gladly have stayed for one more term and had no qualms about scrapping George Washington's precedent. "Oh, Ulys! was that kind to me?" she protested. "Was it just to me?" "Well," he replied, "I do not want to be here another four years. I do not think I could stand it." Rather than feel sympathy for her husband's plight as a profoundly overburdened president, Julia chose to feel "deeply injured.

While here, Grant goes out to the very front, is under fire for hours together, and at the same time he receives despatches from Sherman a thousand miles away, and directs the movements of his army at Atlanta, of another in Louisiana, of the forces at Mobile; and smokes his cigar in calm and quiet all the while," he informed Edwin Booth.

Both Hamilton and Madison were rational men who assumed that people often acted irrationally because of ambition and avarice. Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

We will let it simmer" was a saying John employed throughout his business career.

George Washington always demonstrated a capacity to learn from missteps. "Errors once discovered are more than half amended," he liked to say. "Some men will gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some will in ten or a dozen.

Pierpont handled the West Shore affair better than I could have done it myself.

Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it.… As soon as you

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs— as long as no one is watching, anything goes.