Quotes from Robert K. Greenleaf

Nothing much happens without a dream. For something really great to happen, it takes a really great dream.

Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.

Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates do not talk with their boss the same way they talk with colleagues.

Good leaders must first become good servants.

Servant leadership always empathizes, always accepts the person, but sometimes refuses to accept some of the person's effort or performance as good enough.

The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.

The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee

The quality of a society will be judged by what the least privileged in it achieves.

On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first.

Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.

Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.

For the person with creative potential there is no wholeness except in using it.

Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.

Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.

The variable that marks some periods as barren and some as rich in prophetic vision is in the interest, the level of seeking, the responsiveness of the hearers. The variable is not in the presence or absence or the relative quality and force of the prophetic voices. The prophet grows in stature as people respond to his message...It is the seekers, then, who make the prophet.

Knowledge may be power, but not without the willingness, and the release from inhibiting mind-sets, to use that knowledge.

Everywhere there is much complaining about too few leaders. We have too few because most institutions are structured so that only a few—only one at the time—can emerge.

Now you can do as I do, stand outside and criticize, bring pressure if you can, write and argue about it. All of this may do some good. But nothing of substance will happen unless there are people inside these institutions who are able to (and want to) lead them into better performance for the public good. Some of you ought to make careers inside these big institutions and become a force for good—from the inside.

The servant leader is servant first... It begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first...

In the context of religious leadership, tinkering with structure is not a first choice of means for building or sustaining quality in an institution. Leadership is the prime concern!

Listening, coupled with regular periods of reflection, are essential to the growth of the servant-leader.

Rabbi Heschel replied: "I would say: Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.

But perhaps the greatest threat is that we lack the mechanism of consensus, a way of making up our collective minds.