Quotes About Leadership

I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy's devices.

The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered, that lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.

we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way round. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.

Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.

Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would each have their affairs with their immediate neighbors.

I blame not those who wish to rule, but those who are willing to serve. The same human nature which is always ready to domineer over the subservient, bids us defend ourselves against the aggressor.

Democracy is incapable of empire

prevent your taking the wrong course on matters of great importance by yielding too readily to the persuasions of your allies.

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools." – Thucydides

Once you come forward in the role of liberators, you will find that your strength in the war is enormously increased. -p201

By Thucydides 431 BC

To be hated and to cause pain is, at present, the reality for anyone who takes on the rule of others, and anyone who makes himself hated for matters of great consequence has made the right decision; for hatred does not last long, but the momentary brilliance of great actions lives on as a glory that will be remembered forever after. - Pericles

Phalius son of Eratocleides

Translated by Richard Crawley

It may be satisfying to castigate the likes of Geithner and the heads of Lehman Brothers and AIG, but safety experts like Perrow know it is far more productive to design better systems than to hope for better people.

Managers could be tidy-minded simply because tidiness seemed like the right and proper way to be.

gamble in a wartime prison camp should serve as an example to the staff of the World Bank today. We'll discover what the disasters at Three Mile Island and Deepwater Horizon have to tell us about preventing another Lehman Brothers crisis. We'll learn from a watchmaker

If managers tend to have a bad reputation, what should we make of the people who tell managers how to manage?

It's my job to run the division, and it's your job to critique me.' Petraeus

As noble as our intentions might be as we assume a leadership role, we are always one errant, unthinking action or careless word away from getting outside the boundaries of good judgment or even the moral absolutes that must frame all decisions.

Reality dictates that no matter how bright and capable a leader might be, the work of the organization must be accomplished by trusted colleagues. A leader's inference that he or she is primarily responsible for the organization's success demonstrates blatant hubris.

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?