Quotes About Leadership

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

The government you elect is the government you deserve.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

That government which governs best, governs least.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

A government which can be felt; a government of energy. God send that our country may never have a government, which it can feel.

Leadership is knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts and minds of the larger world. ~ Using philosophy and history to create emotional appeals to shape broad public sentiment.

This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?

What good would politics be, if it didn't give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

You will lead, you will strike up the march of the future, boys will swear by your name, and thanks to your madness they will no longer need to be mad.

Para todo amigo de la ilustración, la palabra «pueblo» y su concepto mismo conservan algo de primitivo que causa aprensión y es porque se sabe que basta tratar de pueblo a la multitud para predisponerla a actos de regresiva maldad. Ante nuestros ojos, o lejos de ellos, ¿cuántas cosas no han ocurrido en nombre del pueblo que no hubiesen podido ocurrir en nombre de dios, de la humanidad o del derecho?

The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command. Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle, one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one another.

Both threat and promise often come from the same political source.

But anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one.