Quotes About Leadership

Put your guns away and get him out,' he ordered brusquely. 'I'll keep you covered. Be careful of him. I don't want a corpse. And hurry up, it's getting light.

Clausewitz's first principle was to have a secure base. From there one proceeds to freedom of action.

The world is too public. These things can only be secured in privacy. You talk of kings and presidents. How much power do they possess? As much as their people will allow them. Who in the world has the power of life or death over his people? Now that Stalin is dead, can you name any man except myself? And how do I possess that power, that sovereignty? Through privacy. Through the fact that nobody knows. Through the fact that I have to account to no one.

James, has it ever occurred to you that every man in the fleet knows what to do except the commanding admiral?

I don't think Castro can hold out much longer.

No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.

Not men who ran the world, but who made it run.

Join MI5? I was ready to lead it.

Get in first and shape the terms.

Get in first and shape the terms. He did so in quick short sentences, his smooth tenor's voice as clear and precise as it was when he sang Goethe's tragic poem.

The revolutionary lone inventor was a fantasy of popular culture – and the Minister

A country overwhelmed by evil has more dignity than one tripped up by fools.

King wrote a colleague during the conference. "I have found it necessary to find time to point out to some 'amateur strategists' in high places that unity of command is not a panacea for all military difficulties—and I shall continue to do so.

I am convinced that there must be one man in command of the entire theater—air, ground, and ships," he said. "We can not manage by cooperation. Human frailties are such that there would be emphatic unwillingness to place portions of troops under another service. If we make a plan for unified command now, it will solve nine-tenths of our troubles.

In facing up to the knotty problem so early in the conflict, Marshall began to reveal why he would prove the one really indispensable American military leader of the Second World War.

Nimitz alone bore the "horrible" burden of command: "It stops right there, and no one else can take it away from him, and no one else can help him.

Roosevelt, according to a story told by Hopkins, was once wheeled into Churchill's bedroom just as the prime minister was emerging from his bath, stark naked. The president, flustered, told his attendant to back him out of the room, but Churchill theatrically declared, "The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.

Waldron took care to convey confidence, to assure his men that they were the best torpedo squadron in the fleet, and even to guarantee that the squadron would score hits on the Japanese carriers in the coming battle.

Nimitz concerned himself with the general discipline of leadership.

TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS

Britain would work its influence gently, so as not to chafe the fragile American ego—Churchill informed his war cabinet that the Americans "were not above learning from us, provided that we did not set out to teach them.

I want you to be the Admiral Nagumo of my staff. I want your every thought, every instinct as you believe Admiral Nagumo might have them. You are to see the war, their operations, their aims, from the Japanese viewpoint

Mahan's dictum that good men and bad ships make a better navy than bad men and good ships was always near Nimitz's thoughts.

Admiral Nimitz never raised his voice and I never heard him curse during the many years I served with him," wrote Lamar.