Quotes About Leadership

Yet with Barack Obama, America has been thrust into an entirely new and almost surreal realm. For no other occupant of the White House, however controversial or unpopular, has ever inspired such a widespread conviction among the populace that a sitting American president and wartime commander in chief actually hates the very nation he was elected to lead and is sympathetic toward her enemies.

one generation is the philosophy of government

All you really need to do is let the comic book geeks know and the rest of the world will follow.

I would have always been the captain. But now you're in charge.

You are here for the headstrong girl who will grow up to be president or something more important, like an English teacher

over you will follow the Lord your God it will be well," Samuel affirms. "But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king" (1 Samuel 12:14

What he's about is destroying a government. Looking like a prime minister in waiting is a second-order consideration.

From the moment Julia Gillard became prime minister, Abbott's mantra has been: "If you want to stop the boats, you have to change the government." But for that to keep working in his favour, it's best the boats keep coming.

Abbott was running a one-man campaign to wreck his own organisation.

There is a story that some years ago an interested mother wrote to a principal of a school, 'Don't teach my boy poetry, he's going to run for Congress.' I've never taken the view that the world of politics and the world of poetry are so far apart." They are united, Kennedy suggests, because their greatness depends on "courage"—it is what makes, as Frost might put it, "all the difference.

JFK had a way of grabbing grandeur from mishap.

Harry S Truman despised settled conventions.

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt.

Nixon wanted view and advice brought to him through intermediaries. He wanted information filtered as it came to him – and he wanted his filters to filter his will back to those whom he must direct.

While JFK had made the sale on a political level, he had not yet completed it on an emotional one.

Jack Kennedy protected a mature and presidential image – tough, yet not unduly combative.

Eleanor Roosevelt on the changes in John F. Kennedy that led her to drop her opposition to his nomination for president: He has the qualities of a scholar, and a sense of history. I had the feeling that he was the man who can learn. I like him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little caulk-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas.

No matter what office LBJ assumed he lifted greater than when he found it.

In front of an audience of Protestant clergy, the Catholic JFK was drawing strength from his vulnerability.

Truman makes friends without influencing people. Dewey influences people without making friends. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

There will always be bosses, pastors and government officials over us—and this structure is actually a good thing. It is not our job to derail it or work around it.

Talent is part of the equation, but when you combine talent with accountability and authenticity, it is tough to beat.

Weak people are destructive; powerful people are constructive. Powerful people create, facilitate, and make things happen.

He who follows another will never overtake him.