Quotes About Leadership

no one knew better than Lincoln that words have consequences. In a world of tinder, he was determined to hold his rhetorical gifts in abeyance in order to reach across factions and avoid a single spark that could set loose an avoidable conflagration.

Leaders in every field, Roosevelt later wrote, "need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.

It's a bully speech," encouraged Roosevelt in reply.

I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.

Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth.

That Mack and Perkins considered Franklin the best choice had little to do with their perception that the young law clerk had within him the makings of a leader. The key to their interest lay in the resonance of the Roosevelt name in Republican circles.

Act like you're talking to those folks," he counseled his students. "Look one of them in the eye and then move on and look another one in the eye." During competitions, he utilized all his supple array of gestures and facial expressions to cue and prompt—now frowning, narrowing his eyes, creasing his brow, shaking his head, gaping in wonder—creating a silent movie to steer and goad his charges to victory.

beneath Lincoln's tenderness and kindness, he was without question the most complex, ambitious, willful, and implacable leader of them all.

Republican Robert La Follette of Wisconsin had defied the machine to become governor by waging "war on the railroads that ruled his state.

To answer those who asked if Lincoln would reconsider, Douglass gave an emphatic no. "Abraham Lincoln will take no step backward," he insisted. "If he has taught us to confide in nothing else, he has taught us to confide in his word.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Clay had been able, decade after decade, to quell rancor and bring opposing parties together in compromise. Time and again, he resisted "extremes of opinion" in both North and South. "Whatever he did, he did for the whole country.

first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood "ready to renounce them." With this

him under the heaviest strain to barter his convictions for the sake of holding office.

For the first time in the history of the country," a writer in Collier's Weekly exclaimed, great corporate leaders and union representatives would join "the President of the United States to talk over their differences face-to-face.

For Lincoln, pragmatic, transactional strategies provided the nuts and bolts of principled, transformational leadership.

As assistant secretary of the navy, working for seven years under Secretary Josephus Daniels, a former newspaper publisher with long experience in Democratic Party politics, Franklin had to learn for the first and last time in his political career how to operate as a subordinate. The situation proved challenging for the young man, who, despite his unfolding leadership skills, remained deficient in one essential quality—humility.

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are *equipped.* Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we -- we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything. ...You, running about playing at revolutions, playing little games, thinking you're important. You're just peasants, you'll never *do* anything.

When a leader invokes blood to arouse us to support him and his cause, it is time for us to be on our guard, to think of those long millennia when our ancestor's lives were safeguard by blood and sacrifice.

Henry of England had all the virtues and all the faults, and solved the contradiction by making scapegoats and sin-eaters of half his entourage.

I am here, Brethren in Christ, to lead you, every man, woman and little child of the Faith, to freedom. God in His mercy be praised.' 'Then God in His mercy has arranged that we should lead them from the rear,' said Jerott Blyth thinly from the window. 'The entire garrison of Tripoli has just marched away.

At least this is a nation, with a religion, a head, a status, a policy. Not a damned Noah's ark: a chicken here, a lamb there, a family of wolves in the next field. I suppose you are proud of your French Queen, playing dice with Scots knucklebones for the greater glory of her native land?

I'll take care of it,' said Richard Crawford quietly, and Lymond lifted his head. 'Oh, Richard. Timely as ever. I want.…' 'I know what you want,' said Lord Culter comfortably, and hooked an arm under his brother's stained shoulders. 'I doubt it,' said Lymond drily.

One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible.