Quotes About Leadership

William Manchester and Paul Reid's Defender of the Realm, Roy Jenkins's Churchill, and Martin Gilbert's Finest Hour—but then to plunge

Burnham's frequent admonition: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Burnham

Recognizing that confidence and fearlessness were attitudes that could be adopted and taught by example, Churchill issued a directive to all ministers to put on a strong, positive front.

What could a Prime Minister at that time and in such desperate conditions say that was not pathetically inadequate—or even downright dangerous?" To Battersby, it typified "the uniquely unpredictable magic that was Churchill"—his ability to transform "the despondent misery of disaster into a grimly certain stepping stone to ultimate victory.

He disliked the social obligations of the captaincy.

This was the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know, when he made his greatest speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership looked like.

On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme

Here, as in other speeches, Churchill demonstrated a striking trait: his knack for making people feel loftier, stronger, and, above all, more courageous.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.

ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE aspects of Churchill's approach to leadership was his ability to switch tracks in an instant and focus earnestly on things that any other prime minister would have found trivial. Depending on one's perspective, this was either an endearing trait or a bedevilment.

Every eight years, the people swallow some politician hook, line, and sinker and make him president. They hold him on the political stomach for about six years. Then they commence to get indigestion because the politicians quit pouring the soda bicarbonate of publicity into their stomachs. At the end of eight years, they vomit him up in order to swallow someone else

It is this that makes people so willing 'to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues with tight jaws and loud voices: those who focus their measured words and their sharpened eyes in the intensity of hate, and so seem most capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief.

The important conclusion for us is that the groups use the leader sometimes with little regard for him personally, but always with regard to fulfilling their own needs and urges.

men worship and fear power and so give their loyalty to those who dispense it.

Naively, one may suppose those at the Top who take decisions are poly­mathic supermen, somehow qualified to assess the many-sided implications of their decisions. Acquaintance with any of them dispels such illusions.

You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers.

They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.

it wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.

Ülkeyi yöneten bir s?n?f var, ak?ls?z bir s?n?f. Hiçbirinin bir boktan anlad??? yok. Bu savaÅŸ bu yüzden ç?kt? iÅŸte.

You lose them the same way your lose a battalion; by errors of judgment, orders that are impossible to fulfill, and through impossible conditions.

You had to trust the people you worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make decisions about the trusting.

Don't forget to tell Pedrico the head is his.

Yes. But we really ought to know it. How it's run. How it works. Who are the crooks and the tyrants and how to get rid of them.

God pity the Spanish people. Any leader they have will muck them.