Quotes About Leadership

He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word fear. Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word survival...

Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

Our rulers rule by consent, which means that we like having them as rulers, if they do what we want them to do.

Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.

Stopping a battle is much harder than starting it. Starting it only requires you to shout 'Attack!' but when you want to stop it, everyone is busy.

The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person.

The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it.

I let you sleep, Sam, said Lady Sybil. You didn't get in this morning until after three. Everyone's double-shifting, dear, said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. I've got to set a good example. I'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning, said Sybil.

No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept resonated in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were...sort of...bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical.

He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba.

Gentlemen, please," said the Patrician. He shook his head. "Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war.

Some people are born to command. Some people achieve command. And others have command thrust upon them ...

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

If you want something done, give it to someone who's busy!

The important thing about being a leader is not being right or wrong but being certain. Of course it helps to be right as well, the Abbot conceeded.

You always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.

To be a leader you have to learn to shout! But after you've learned to shout, you have to learn not to!

Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people's homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.

One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash.

being assassinated is natural causes for a king.

Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.

Well,' said Tiffany, 'there's too much to be done and not enough people to do it.' The smile that the kelda gave her was a strange one. The little woman said, 'Do ye let them try? Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.

If you ask 10 nomes to push four will pull and two will say pardon

Sometimes Carrot sounded like a civics essay written by a stunned choirboy.