Quotes About Leadership

As recently as the eighteenth century, England happily installed a German king, George I, even though he spoke not a word of English and reigned for thirteen years without mastering his subjects' language. Common people did not expect to speak like their masters any more than they expected to live like them.

Facing disaster, the committee did what committees in desperate circumstances sometimes do: it commissioned another committee with a better title.

A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.

If there is nothing else to learn from history, it's that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led. Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.

Obama doesn't know how to be President. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur!

His knowledge of war has fed a passion for peace.

Sooner or later, every president faces decisions in which the right choice is bad politics, at least in the short term. If the stakes are high, you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn. It's the job you promised to do.

I look at Danny and Carolyn, the only other people in the room. It's time for me to go, alone and off the record. For years I've been constantly going, but never alone and never off the record. The Secret Service takes every step with me, and at least one aide is almost always there, even when I'm on vacation. A record is kept of where I am every hour.

You remember when we first took this route?" I ask, recalling our postelection tour before I took the oath of office. "Like it was yesterday," says Carolyn. "I'll never forget it," Danny says. "We were so full of…hope, I guess. We were so sure we'd make the world a better place." Carolyn says, "Maybe you were. I was scared to death.

We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have not done so; instead, we have drifted. And that drifting has eroded our resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence.

Bill Clinton

There is nothing I value more in subordinates than their willingness to tell me I'm wrong, to challenge me, to sharpen my decision making. Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government our founders had given us. He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." That's a job no president can do alone. It's up to all of us to keep it. And to make the most of it.

It might have been a problem if they'd all attacked at once, coming from different directions. She would have taken them all out, but it would have required more ammunition and probably made more noise. It's always easier just to take out the leader. If there is nothing else to learn from history, it's that from humans to animals, from the most primitive to the most civilized, most individuals want to be led. Take out the leader, and the rest of the pack panics.

I close the door and plug the secure line into my laptop and pull up the triumvirate of Carolyn Brock, Liz Greenfield, and Sam Haber of Homeland Security on a three-way split screen.

She is buttoned-up as always, a smart suit, dark hair pulled back, never letting her guard down while on camera. Her job, she has told me more than once, is not to make friends with the staff but to keep them organized, praise good work, and sweat the details so I can focus on the hard, big stuff.

I let out air, nod my head. "Hey." Danny gets up from his chair and sits down next to me on the couch. He lightly punches my knee. "Being in charge isn't being alone. I'm right here. Same place I've always been, no matter what your title is. Same place I'll always be." "Yeah, I—I know." I look at him. "I know that.

There was a time when that statement, from a president to a House Speaker, would be enough. Those days are long in the rearview mirror.

sixth president leaves you clueless? I will help you. He was John Quincy Adams, and he once said, 'Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand in the name of spreading democracy.

It's hard to be humble when they play a song for you every time you enter the room, when the world financial markets hang on your every word, and when you command the worlds greatest military arsenal, but if you need to knock yourself down a few pegs, try checking your stool for blood.

I'm not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it, I don't know when I lost it, I don't really think I ever had it. But I've seen the boss's job...and I don't want it!

I studied every thing but never topped.. But today the toppers of the best universities are my employees - Bill Gates

The countries that build great zero-carbon companies and industries will be the ones that lead the global economy in the coming decades.