Quotes About Leadership

What others may perceive as a gamble, leaders understand to be merely a calculated risk. In the face of superior odds, a leader must have the courage to innovate.

What separates a leader from the rest is not only his ability to see what needs to be done but his unhesitating execution of it, even while others watch or deliberate.

Leadership begins and ends with hunger. The hunger of an individual to risk his or her own personal comfort and affluence and attack the status quo is not only the initiation of leadership but also its sustaining force.

You are in command. Your job is so challenging, so complex, so never-ending that most people could never come close to understanding the load you carry. You are thrust into impossible situations with little time and usually even less information upon which to make a decision.

the experience of others becomes invaluable. It acts as a shortcut to bypass the long and painful process of trial and error. Indeed, all wise leaders learn from others, both contemporary and historical.

What really needs to be learned from other successful leaders is their thought processes, their reasons, their methods of emotional control, their strategies, their abilities in dealing with other people, their subtle touches.

It's the men, and the leadership they follow, who make all the difference.

I don't think there's anybody in America who thinks my personality is best suited to being Number Two.

Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics, but it's awful policy.

Today we must make a pact with each other to end this reckless conduct with the people's government.

The rule for effective governance is simple. It is one Ronald Reagan knew by heart. And one that he successfully employed with Social Security and the Cold War. When there is a problem, you fix it. That is the job you have been sent to do and you cannot wait for someone else to do it for you.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics, to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership, we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama's leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff.

Now, do I think there has to be shared sacrifice among other nations in the world who want a stable and secure world? Absolutely, there has to be. But I don't think that America can ever abdicate its leadership role in the world because of who we are and where we've come from. We are the symbol for the world for freedom and liberty.

Someone has to stay on the line and say, no, we can do this by cutting spending and reducing the size of government. That's what I was committed to doing.

I think Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time. Whether he'll do it again in the future, I don't know. But Gov. Romney never has.

It's not that I'm universally loved. We know I'm not in New Jersey. But what they do say in New Jersey is, 'We like him, and we think he's telling us the truth.' I think we need to have that type of politics on the national level.

I don't compromise my principles for politics.

I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth)- Little Bee

Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [...] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today.

You should have to be a lot more than decent to be a kid's hero.

Perhaps modern esteem for these figures serves as a reminder that, though statesmen may have to struggle mightily to advance their cause, and though they may lose on an issue or come out on the wrong side in the judgment of history, their principled determination is sufficient to win them a place in people's hearts, long after they are gone.

Americans have viewed their former presidents almost like a fourth branch of government.

I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.