Quotes About Leadership

If you accept any position of authority you have to know when to break or circumvent a rule. It's the knowing when that's important.

There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones

The trouble with this country is that it's a mass of anarchists and improvisors governed by bandits. pg. 164

It occurred to me that kids could easily take over the world. They could hack in and use our own technology against us. Or just decide to stop helping us figure it out to begin with. Either way, we adults would be relegated to a life of servitude and there would be weekly keggers in the White House rose garden. The only reason this hasn't already happened is that the kids haven't figured it out yet. When

It occurred to me that kids could easily take over the world. They could hack in and use our own technology against us. Or just decide to stop helping us figure it out to begin with. Either way, we adults would be relegated to a life of servitude and there would be weekly keggers in the White House rose garden. The only reason this hasn't already happened is that the kids haven't figured it out yet. When they buy a clue, it's gonna suck to be a grown-up.

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave.

innovators need to be disagreeable. By disagreeable, I don't mean obnoxious or unpleasant. I mean that on that fifth dimension of the Big Five personality inventory, "agreeableness," they tend to be on the far end of the continuum. They are people willing to take social risks—to do things that others might disapprove of.

But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.

all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.

We can admire Curtis LeMay, respect him, and try to understand his choices. But Hansell is the one we give our hearts to. Why? Because I think he provides us with a model of what it means to be moral in our modern world. We live in an era when new tools and technologies and innovations emerge every day. But the only way those new technologies serve some higher purpose is if a dedicated band of believers insists that they be used to that purpose.

Narcissists typically make judgments with greater confidence than other people… and, because their judgments are rendered with such conviction, other people tend to believe them and the narcissists become disproportionately more influential in group situations. Finally, because of their self-confidence and strong need for recognition, narcissists tend to "self-nominate"; consequently, when a leadership gap appears in a group or organization, the narcissists rush to fill it.

People at the top are self-conscious about what they say (and rightfully so) because they have position and privilege to protect — and self-consciousness is the enemy of "interestingness.

It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave. This is called the "principle

What Jaffe proved was that the powerful have to worry about how others think of them-that those who give orders are acutely vulnerable to the opinions of those whom they are ordering about.

And Leites and Wolf were wrong. "It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place, but by the stupidity and brutality of governments

To become a success at what they did, they had to shed some part of their own identity, because the deep respect for authority that runs throughout Korean culture simply does not work in the cockpit.

We would all be sitting in our deck chairs in the backyard, and we would look up, and all of a sudden, the Air House—or maybe even some specific part of the Air House—would be gone. Poof. High-altitude precision bombing. Curtis LeMay won the battle. Haywood Hansell won the war.

Hell, yeah, we're going to ride," the cussing preacher said and addressed his board. "Find you any kind of crack you can to hide in if you're scared, but I'm walking downtown after this meeting and getting on the bus. I'm not going to look back to see who's following me.

The people at the top don't just work harder. They work much, much harder.

rep" squad—the all-star

our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic.