Quotes About Leadership

Elizabeth Blair of brother Frank: he could "not let even a great man set his small dogs on him without kicking the dog & giving his master some share of the resentment.

Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.

Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life—a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.

For better than thirty years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his way as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject

No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent.

Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments," he wrote, "but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart.

It was Andrew Jackson's motto, he reminded, that "if you temporize, you are lost.

The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country.

By privately endorsing Seward's spirit of compromise while projecting an unyielding public image, President-elect Lincoln retained an astonishing degree of control over an increasingly chaotic and potentially devastating situation.

Abraham Lincoln would maintain that he had never been in favor "of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry.

became postmaster general, and Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's "Mars," eventually became secretary

Lincoln understood that the greatest challenge for a leader in a democratic society is to educate public opinion.

When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: "The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together.

It soon became clear, however, that Abraham Lincoln would emerge the undisputed captain of this most unusual cabinet, truly a team of rivals. The powerful competitors who had originally disdained Lincoln became colleagues who helped him steer the country through its darkest days. Seward

I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,'

This acute sense of timing, one journalist observed, was the secret to Lincoln's gifted leadership: "He always moves in conjunction with propitious circumstances, not waiting to be dragged by the force of events or wasting strength in premature struggles with them.

After a quarter of a century in politics, Roosevelt observed, he had found that change was realized by "men who take the next step; not those who theorize about the 200th step.

As governor general of the Philippines, Taft had welcomed every political group at Malacañan Palace, making it "a rule never to pay any attention to personal squabbles and differences.

A true leader is a man who can get people to work together on the points on which they agree and who can persuade others that when they disagree there are peaceful methods to settle their differences.

Johnson insisted, "I don't want this symposium to come here and spend two days talking about what we have done, the progress has been much too small. We haven't done nearly enough. I'm kind of ashamed of myself that I had six years and couldn't do more than I did.

If "defeat is an orphan," the old saying goes, "victory has a thousand fathers

The vice presidency "ought to be abolished," he told his friend Leonard Wood. "The man who occupies it may at any moment be everything; but meanwhile he is practically nothing.