Quotes About Leadership

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement, and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion

A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power.

It is the duty of those who claim to rule over others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the appearance of tranquillity is restored.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

There is no qualification for government, but virtue and wisdom, whether actual or presumptive. . . . Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man.

The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution.

No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of misconduct.

The true lawgiver ought to have an heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself.

There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.

The greatest statesmen are those able at once to preserve and reform.

timid piety, which utterly disqualifies for government;

there was no foreign war, because this prince was always ready for war.

Do not allow yourselves to be cajoled into supposing that political apathy is dangerous. Dictators such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin are raised to power, not by apathy, but by mass fanaticism.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Wednesday, Hendricks telephoned acceptance, and on Friday afternoon Roosevelt joyfully released news of the nomination to the press. Privately, to his old Assembly colleague Henry L. Sprague, he wrote: "I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' Ã¢â'¬Â28

An autocrat's a ruler that does what th' people wants an' takes th' blame f'r it.

More clearly than almost any other statesman he beheld the grandeur of the nation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the coming years.

He is a great big boy, Wilson said. There is a sweetness about him that is very compelling. You can't resist the man. I can easily understand why his followers are so fond of him.

It is not22 a good thing for a country to have a professional yodeler, a human trombone like Mr. Bryan as secretary of state, nor a college president with an astute and shifty mind, a hypocritical ability to deceive plain people … and no real knowledge or wisdom concerning internal and international affairs as head of the nation.

Most of the members are positively corrupt, and the others are really singularly incompetent.

confidently, "President

When we thus rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.

There may be honest differences of opinion as to many government policies; but surely there can be no such differences as to the need of unflinching perseverance in the war against successful dishonesty.

Yet New York is always the chef, never the diner. Being

had taken place just before Grant's visit, and Wilhelm was unable to receive him. "Here is an old man," says Bismarck, — "one of the kindest old gentlemen in the world — and yet they must try and shoot him!