Quotes About Leadership

But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of them was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power. Their responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that fictional being, "the State", which cannot be produced for trial, cannot testify, and cannot be sentenced.

Power depended on being in the room when the decisions were taken.

What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason?

Sometimes, he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight--start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

Since when has idiocy been a bar to advancement in politics?

if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight—start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

Politics is a country idiot capable of concentrating on only one thing at a time.

Problems do not queue up outside a statesman's door, waiting to be solved in an orderly fashion, chapter by chapter, as the books would have us believe; instead they crowd in en masse, demanding attention.

It is in the nature of things that not all politicians can achieve greatness.

But there is as much skill in knowing how to handle a meeting of ten as there is in manipulating a gathering of hundreds.

Nowadays, of course, most senators employ a slave or two two out their speeches; I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the next is place in front of them; how these fellows can call themselves statesman defeats me

Cuáles son las únicas armas que poseo, Tiro? -me preguntó, y él mismo respondió-: Estas -dijo, señalando sus libros-. Las palabras. César y Pompeyo tienen soldados; Craso, dinero; Clodio, los matones de la calle. Mis legiones son mis palabras. Gracias a ellas he llegado donde estoy, y gracias a ellas sobreviviré.

a man of great ambition and boundless stupidity, two qualities which in politics often go together.

It is at this point that I'm afraid you lose me. You want my country to go to war to prevent three million Germans joining Germany, on the off chance that you and your friends can then get rid of Hitler? Well, I have to say, from what I've seen today, he looks pretty well entrenched to me.

We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.

Sometimes,' he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, 'if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight – start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

Caesar is a different category of man altogether. Pompey merely wants to rule the world. Caesar longs to smash it to pieces and remake it in his own image.

Excellent. I approve of statesmen who write philosophy. It means they have given up all hope of power.

But if you seek power," he said, almost to himself, "and if you are a new man, this is what you have to do. Nobody is ever going to simply hand it to you.

Francis George: I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

is one of the most potent myths in politics, believe me.

We do not need a church that will move with the world, we need a church that will move the world!

It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person's behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.

If you are a boss, ask yourself: When you look back at how you've treated followers, peers, and superiors, in their eyes, will you have earned the right to be proud of yourself? Or will they believe that you ought to be ashamed of yourself and embarrassed by how you have trampled on others' dignity day after day?