Quotes About Leadership

When we asked Woolard about the most important lessons from his Apple experience, he reported that a board leader has to have regular access to the chief financial officer, deeply understand the company strategy and execution—and pick and partner with the right CEO.

These factors point to one of the fundamentals of leadership: the greater the scope of a decision and the more variables and uncertainties there are, the more important it is for the leader to be aware of unconscious drives and biases that could affect emotions, reason, and intuition.

woman once came to Gandhi with her young son. "Mahatma-ji, tell my son to stop eating sugar. It's not good for him." Gandhi told her to return with her son in a week's time. When they returned, Gandhi said to the boy, "Stop eating sugar." The woman was perplexed and asked Gandhi why he couldn't have told the boy that a week earlier. Gandhi replied, "Because at that time I had not given up sugar." What

It is in the nature of democracies, perhaps, that while visionaries are sometimes necessary to make them, once made they can be managed by mediocrities.

In India, the sapling was planted by the nation's founders, who lived long enough (and worked hard enough) to nurture it to adulthood. Those who came afterwards could disturb and degrade the tree of democracy but, try as they might, could not uproot or destroy it.

India is no longer a constitutional democracy but a populist one.

in the post-Gandhian war for power the first casualty is decency'.

If Jawaharlal Nehru was the Maker of Modern India, then perhaps Potti Sriramulu should be named its Mercator.

My own view – speaking as a historian rather than citizen – is that as long as Pakistan exists there will be Hindu fundamentalists in India. In times of stability, or when the political leadership is firm, they will be marginal or on the defensive. In times of change, or when the political leadership is irresolute, they will be influential and assertive.

You gave us a lawyer; we gave you back a Mahatma.

Foulgrin's Rule Twenty-Three: tactics without strategy are useless.

Without Christ not one step," David Livingstone declared, "with Him anywhere.

Lead a large group of people—to consistently take a few simple actions—over a sustained period of time.

Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.

Even though we did not author creation, we wish to author morality and take the reins of life.

They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

this and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.

El pueblo tiene siempre algún campeón, a quien enaltece por encima de todo… Ésta y no otra es la raíz de la que nace un tirano; al principio es un protector.

So, for thousands of years, you humans have needed kings, priests, philosophers, fine examples to look up to and say, 'They are good, I wish I could be like them.

The leader might be analyzed as the one who perceived what could be achieved and did it. p159

But no one with a will to the service of others would permit himself such an escape. The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others." One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero, he said, is that one lives only for self while the other acts to redeem society.

Government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind.

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.