Quotes About Leadership

thrust out their right arms

Because in your political system, neither brilliance, nor even basic competence, seem to be prerequisites for getting elected to an office. Instead, the skills required seem to be popularity, and an ability to lie shamelessly with every breath, make false promises, and trash your opponents.

How many dictators and tyrants throughout history had been psychopathic? Erin suspected almost all of them.

And now that Martin was involved, she would actually be meeting a man who had skyrocketed to the top of the business world and was the darling of the media, replacing Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg before him. Eben Martin was larger than life.

And put us both in charge.

We hang the petty thieves. The master thieves we appoint to public office." —Aesop "Any

gruppenfuhrer, the equivalent of a major general,

They weren't the smartest or best trained that humanity had to offer, and they didn't have the best judgment. The truly brilliant, truly gifted, wanted little to do with politics.

Desh believed that dangerous character traits such as megalomania, sadism, and sociopathy tended to be enriched in populations of people who had risen to positions of power and influence. This enrichment was even more pronounced at the top of organizations such as the CIA and the military, to which people with these pathologies tended to gravitate preferentially.

Trying to get Congress to pull in one direction is worse than herding cats. It's herding self-interested, narcissistic, opportunistic cats. Who only care about getting reelected, no matter how much they pretend to care about their constituencies.

Trying to get Congress to pull in one direction is worse than herding cats. It's herding self-interested, narcissistic, opportunistic cats.

Mark Zuckerberg is an optimist, whereas Elon Musk and Bill Gates are very much the opposite, as was the late Stephen Hawking.

You almost had to feel sorry for women trying to make it to the top of the crime world—they had a tougher road. I mean, a woman would have to murder twice as many people in cold blood as a man to get to the top, and much more viciously. It really wasn't fair to these corrupt, soulless, psychopathic women. But, hey, I didn't make the rules.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so." —Gore Vidal

Politics, noun: [Poly 'many' + tics 'blood-sucking parasites']" ?—Larry Hardiman "We hang the petty thieves. The master thieves we appoint to public office." ?—Aesop "Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so." ?—Gore Vidal

How many times had politicians, elected solely on charisma and domestic policy expertise, made tragic blunders, totally avoidable tragic blunders, leaving the soldiers in the field to twist in the winds of political expediency? Spilling

I had been taught that going into battle with someone you loved—especially a subordinate—was a terrible idea, because it led to suboptimal decisions.

Presidents could be fickle and arbitrary. Each new one with wildly different visions and priorities. And when all was said and done, they were nothing more than civilians who managed to get donors excited enough to give them money, and then win a popularity contest. They weren't the smartest or best trained that humanity had to offer, and they didn't have the best judgment. The truly brilliant, truly gifted, wanted little to do with politics. Cargill

George Patton, who had said, "You don't win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other dumb bastard die for his.

Shared belief in an absurdity is a much better indicator of loyalty than shared belief in the truth. And it's a much better way to create group cohesion. If a leader asks you to believe that the sky is blue, and you do, what does that prove? The truth is easy. But if he requires his followers to believe the sky is green, they quickly distance themselves from non-believers and become firmly united in a shared delusion.

Spilling blood to protect the homeland was one thing. But spilling blood, only to then vacate hard-won gains on a whim and leave a vacuum that ended up making the problem far worse, was another.

POLITICS (noun): Poly, meaning "many" plus Tics, meaning "blood-sucking parasites." —Larry Hardiman "I believe that any politician who comes to power, in part, through his skill in debate and public speeches, who is agile in handling questions at news conferences, with a glistening TV or radio image, has the conversational talents to be a natural liar." —Paul Ekman, Telling Lies

Neville Chamberlain, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in a letter.

We hang the petty thieves. The master thieves we appoint to public office.