Quotes About Leadership

It is not so much the sight of immorality of the great that is to be feared as that of immorality leading to greatness. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE Democracy in America

Sólo después de que florezca el roble, que es el último en primavera, despierta el fresno. Me lo imagino como el pastor de los demás árboles, vigilando que las hojas de todos estén verdes antes de florecer él.

There was always somebody at the top who dictated the terms, specifically or by implication, that those below had to accept. - Kurt Wallander

The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation...

The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others.

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.

The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.

The Christian leader cannot simply be persons who have well informed opinions about the burning issues of our time.

I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her vulnerable self... to enter into a deeper solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and bring the light of Jesus there.

Christian leadership is a dead-end street when nothing new is expected, when everything sounds familiar and when ministry has regressed to the level of routine.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing.

The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.

I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the new century.

Often I have the impression that priests and ministers are the least confessing people in the Christian community

The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God. A Christian leader is called to help people hear that voice and so be comforted and consoled.

We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion.

As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion.

I think [Robert E.] Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man, had a good character, and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm.

Seward would inspire a cow with statesmanship if she understood our language.

While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh.

Washington was no politician as we understand the word, replied Ratcliffe abruptly. He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

The fate of the country... does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.