Quotes About Leadership

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.

I think we ought to let him [Patrick Gray] hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.

Source of national strength. By providing leadership, guidance, restraint, security, and values, the family unit promotes the greatness of the nation. Should the family fail in these responsibilities, the nation will suffer as a result.

That was the definition of management—getting others to do your work for you. And we were the others.

A man needs a much bigger orbit than a woman. He needs a mission, a life purpose, and he needs to know his name. Only then is he fit for a woman, for only then does he have something to invite her into.

successful businesses and economies invest into a downturn, aiming to emerge on the other side ahead of their competitors.

The New Frontier I speak of is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intent to ask of them.

Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

Politics is like football if you see daylight, go through the hole.

I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose plant it this afternoon'

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nations greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. [News conference, April 21 1961]

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. [Address at Rice University, September 12 1962]

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. [Undelivered remarks for Dallas Trade Mart, November 22 1963]

Mughal success was the product of hard-driving, active rulership exercised by extremely capable rulers who acted as their own chief executives.

When you take care of your people, meditate on whose blood has washed them clean.

We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies--in the minds of those closest to the work. It's been there in front of our noses all along while we've been running around chasing robots and reading books on how to become Japanese--or at least manage like them.

Early in the game, when it was still close, a couple of calls had gone against Carolina. Some of the students had started a profane chant. It didn't last very long, because Smith walked straight to the scorer's table, took the PA microphone, pointed in the direction of the students, and said, "Stop. Now. We don't do that here. We win with class at Carolina." They stopped. Instantly. When