quotations about leadership
The man fit to command may be compared with the architect, who adjusts the plan and directs its execution. His skill must extend to every part of the work; that of his workmen is limited by their respective tasks.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leading from the Lockers
Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.
JOSEPH CLARENCE ROST
Leadership for the Twenty-first Century
Because our desire for a coherent vision of the world is bottomless, our hunger for leadership is insatiable, too. Leaders make the world more sensible, but never sensible enough.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.
KEN BLANCHARD
Leading at a Higher Level
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
The right man comes at the right time.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Leadership is love made visible.
DARYA FUNCHES
attributed, Speak the Truth and Point to Hope
Leadership is the outward expression of our inner character.
DICK ABEL
The DNA of Leadership
The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.
FENWICK W. ENGLISH
The Art of Educational Leadership
Leadership is most effective when those acting in that capacity realize that their effect on others must be indirect. This indirectness means influencing others by changing yourself.
GREG ROBINSON & MARK ROSE
A Leadership Paradox
That's what leadership is all about, identifying quality people, giving them the opportunity and experience to create and develop to continue to make the company successful. The best leaders identify and mentor potential leaders. A leader's most important legacy is the leaders he or she develops.
KENNETH E. STRONG & JOHN A. DICICCO
Leadership Is a Choice
Leadership is taken, not given.
LOUISE STERLING & SUE DAVIDOFF
The Courage to Lead
Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
Good leadership is largely invisible.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
When one sheep leads the way all the rest follow.
CHINESE PROVERB
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can't be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time -- either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.
ROBERT JARVIK
attributed, Deliberate Success