LEADERSHIP
Quotes
1
It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you have always played it.
— Richard M. Nixon
2
When you soar like an eagle, you attract the hunters. — Milton S. Gould
3
To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
4
We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
— Will Rogers
5
‘Tis skill, not strength that governs a ship.
— Thomas Fuller
6
When a leader is in the Democratic party he’s a boss; when he’s in the Republican party he’s a leader.
— Harry S. Truman
7
A leader is a dealer in hope.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
8
The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about him that he knows.
— Clarence B. Randall
9
They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
— Matthew 15:14
10
Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. Don’t fall victim to what I call the “ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome.” You must be willing to fire.
— T. Boone Pickens
11
You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
12
The art of leadership...consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.
— Adolf Hitler
13
No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.
— William Penn
14
In time of peril, like the needle to the lodestone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.
— Herman Melville
15
I must follow them. I am their leader.
— Andrew Bonar Law
16
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.
— Harry S. Truman
17
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
— Henry David Thoreau
18
A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
— Arthur W. Radford
19
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
— Matthew 5:14-16
20
Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.
— Groucho Marx
21
Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.
— Sign on desk of broadcasting executive Ted Turner
22
I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help — and God’s.
— Lyndon B. Johnson, on arriving in Washington, D.C., on the evening of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, November 22, 1963
23
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss...The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
— Theodore Roosevelt
24
General Dwight D. Eisenhower used a simple devise to illustrate the art of leadership. Laying an ordinary piece of string on a table, he’d illustrate how you could easily pull it in any direction. “Try and push it, though,” he cautioned, “and it won’t go anywhere. It’s just that way when it comes to leading people.”
25
Now I don’t want you to consider me as just your commanding officer. I want you to look on me like I was ...well...God.
— Bull, in The Great Santini, screenplay by Lewis John Carlino
Sayings
1
The speed of the leader is the speed of the pack.
— Yukon saying
2
The thoughtless strong man is the chief among lazy men.
— West African saying
3
Take me to your leader.
4
You can always tell a leader, but you can’t tell him much.
5
Judge a leader by the followers.
6
Leadership casts a long shadow.
Joke
Part of the college application was directed to the applicant’s parents, and one of the questions was, “Would you consider your child to be a leader or a follower?” After much deliberation, the father wrote that he felt his child, although very much an individual, was really more of a follower.
Not long after, a letter of acceptance arrived from the college, accompanied by a note from the director of admissions welcoming his child. “We feel he’ll fit in especially well,” the letter went on, “as he will be the only follower in a class of 412 leaders.”