Quotes About Leadership

It took him (Washington) more than a year to gain control over his own aggressive instincts.

There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.

Over the years, I have seen too many politicians ruin their careers because they could not accept defeat graciously.

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights.

Most Canadians don't understand the House of Commons. They turn on their televisions, see us yelling at one another, and dismiss us as a bunch of fools.

A leader has to know how the system functions - not just the system of government but the whole social and economic system, including business, the unions, and the universities.

Vision is not political rhetoric.

A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against.

What you should do is hire very smart people who are a good fit. And then you should expose them (and yourself) to ideas. The ideas should come from within and from outside.

Children need models more than they need critics.

Children need models rather than critics.

For worldly success, we need virtues that make us loved and faults that make us feared.

261. And for me, to be a ruler is a worthwhile ambition, even if you're in Hell.

Humility was a virtue that the Lakota of old expected their leaders to possess. A quiet, humble person, we believed, was aware of other people and other things. An arrogant, boastful man was only aware of himself. Interestingly, our methods of selecting leaders today seem to favor the arrogant and boastful.

To meet this many-headed Hydra, the president claims he—and he alone—must have the flexibility to define the enemy as he sees fit, and to act against it no matter what form it takes.

I am not berating the Germans here; I am simply pointing out that judgment goes with the strong, the winners.

The pathway to building a legacy of fearless influence is not spanned by rainbow hue or prettily lined by daisies. On the contrary, it is shaped by our ability to grow less in our eyes in order to grow more in what we do.

I think there is more opportunity now than ever before for women in politics if they will keep their ideals high and go in with the purpose of being of service rather than with the purpose of obtaining an office.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

It required a lot less energy, intelligence, and competence to run against government than to try to make government work.

For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegienace to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy. It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy. It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong and resolve to change course and get it right.

It was that hard; I still feel that way. But I believe that President Bush failed to lead. History will judge him harshly not for the mistakes he made- we all make mistakes- but for the opportunities he squandered.

There is never a time when a president can act to stop a tragedy from occurring without being held politically accountable one way or the other. If he does it and fails, he's wrong. If he does it and succeeds, he was never right because it didn't happen. If we go in and stop an act of genocide, we can't prove what we stopped.