Quotes About Leadership

And on my conscience, he said, I will for ever bear the weight of all those men who died in a hopeless cause. Two thousand against five thousand? How can 1 justify leading so few against so many? You know how. So I can be king? So that we are not slaves in our own land, I said.

A lord who does not distribute wealth is a lord who will lose the allegiance of his men

The people follow him. Because they have no choice. They follow, but do they love him? Some do, Appah Rao answered. But what does it matter? Why should a ruler want his people's love? Their obedience, yes, but love? Love is for children, McCandless, and for gods and for women.

We are going to soak this rock with blood! I am Uhtred! I am the lord here. This is my rock!

treaties are best negotiated from a position of strength.

If the Danes come, he spoke to Wulfhere, you must let me fight. You don't know how to fight. Then you must teach me. He slid Serpent-Breath back into the scabbard. Wessex needs a king who can fight, he said, instead of pray.

If the leader is a good man he will be liked and if he's not, he won't, and if he is a good man and a bad leader then he is better off dead.

Sharpe, for most of the

Bernard Cornwell

King Alfred's dream was turning into reality. I am old enough to remember a time when the Danes ruled almost all of what is now England. They captured Northumbria, took East Anglia, and occupied all of Mercia. Guthrum the Dane had then invaded Wessex, driving Alfred and a handful of men into the marshes of Sumorsæte, but Alfred had won the unlikely victory at Ethandun, and ever since the Saxons had inexorably worked their way northwards.

Most men want to follow, and what they demand of their leader is prosperity. We are the ring givers, the gold givers.

Men who lead by fear might become great kings and might rule lands so great that no man knows their boundaries, but they can be beaten, too, beaten by men who fight as brothers.

This was a clever man, as clever as Alfred, and he knew that weakness invited war.

The Tippoo's life seemed charmed. He stepped in blood, but none of it was his and it seemed as though he could not die, but only kill, and so he did, cold-bloodedly, deliberately, exultantly defending his city and his dream against the barbarians who had come to snatch his tiger throne.

Ranks of men on foot, men with shields, men with weapons, a shield wall that was meant to awe us, and it did. A shield wall is a terrible thing. It is a wall of wood, iron, and steel with one purpose alone, to kill. And this shield wall was massive, a wall of painted round shields stretching wide across the ridge's flat top, and above it were the banners of the jarls, chieftains, and kings who had come to kill us.

But I hated Alfred. I hated him for humiliating me at Exanceaster when he had made me wear a penitent's robe and crawl on my knees. Nor did I think of him as my king. He was a West Saxon and I was a Northumbrian, and I reckoned so long as he was king then Wessex had small chance of surviving. He believed God would protect him from the Danes, while I believed they had to be defeated by swords.

Men weeping because they had met the horror, and it was us. We were the wolf pack of Bebbanburg and we had taken back what Ida the Flamebearer had first won.

name's sake.' The men called out amen and some

If they saw men swarming up the wall, if they saw the axes chopping at our shields on the wall's top, then they would join the battle. Men want to be on the winning side.

Confusion is inevitable in battle, but indecision is unforgivable.

How many's that?" I asked the shepherd. "Jiggit and mumph, lord," he said. "Is that enough?" "It's enough, lord." "Kill the rest then," I said. "Jiggit and mumph?" Willibald asked, still shivering. "Twenty and five," I said. "Yain, tain, tether, mether, mumph. It's how shepherds count. I don't know why. The world is full of mystery.

You don't buy a dog and bark yourself

Bernard Cornwell

Choose your battles,' I snarled at Æthelstan. 'That space between your ears was given so that you can think! If you just charge whenever you see an enemy you'll earn yourself an early grave.' Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg