Quotes About Leadership

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

When talking with older men, men who could help him, Lyndon Johnson "gave them," this aide says, "whatever they wanted to hear.

He never took strong positions, positions where you knew where Lyndon stood," one student had said. "He was only interested in himself and what could help himself." The feeling in Washington was the same.

While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men— a great reader of men.

People are always asking me why I chose Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson to write about. Well, I must say I never thought of my books as the stories of Moses or Johnson. I never had the slightest interest in writing the life of a great man. From the very start, I thought of writing biographies as a means of illuminating the times of the men I was writing about and the great forces that molded those times—particularly the force that is political power.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it—it keeps him upright.

Prof is right; more than three people can't decide anything.

Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.

If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.

Foster had in common with every great religious leader of that planet two traits: he had an extremely magnetic personality, and sexually he did not fall near the human norm. On Earth great religious leaders were always either celibate or the antithesis. Foster was not celibate. (p.289)

I hate to tell you this, but you are just stupid and eager and sincere enough to make the kind of officer that men love to follow into some silly predicament.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

We organized First and Second Volunteer Defense Gunners of Free Luna-two regiments so that First could snub lowly Second and Second could be jealous of First.

Because revolution—armed uprising—requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die—or he's just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble.

But you don't have to take his advice. Whether you use his ideas, or whether they spark some different plan—make your decision and snap out orders. The one thing—the only thing!—that can strike terror in the heart of a good platoon sergeant is to find that he's working for a boss who can't make up his mind.

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

Politics is not evil; politics is the human race's most magnificent achievement.

the government'—that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government'—but what individuals?

She might say: "This mess will clear up if you take that troublemaker there — What's your name? You, with the goatee — out and shoot him. Do it now."--Glory Road; Heinlein

The very idea that the Chief would let anybody expose himself to danger in his place is-well, I ought to slap your face; that's what I ought to do!