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Leadership Quotes

A small page, and a mixed one. It is split between novelists and management writers, so you will find Henry Miller and Tom DeMarco on the same list. Miller, in The Wisdom of the Heart (1941): “The real leader has no need to lead — he is content to point the way.” DeMarco, in Peopleware (1987): “The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.”

Thomas J. Watson, in 1939, put it in terms of discipline: nothing proves a man’s ability to lead others as much as what he does from day to day to lead himself. The line about leadership being a mix of strategy and character, credited to General Norman Schwarzkopf, is marked disputed.

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Most quoted on leadership:

Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead (1954)

The art of leadership is in the ability to make people want to work for you, while they are really under no obligation to do so. Leaders are people, who raise the standards by which they judge themselves and by which they are willing to be judged.

Haile Selassie

Hener was the hero-king,
Heaven-born, dear to us,
Showing his shield
A shelter for peace.

Esaias Tegnér Fridthjof's Saga (1820)

With the changes in technological complexity, especially in information technology, the leadership task has changed. Leadership in a networked organization is a fundamentally different thing from leadership in a traditional hierarchy.

Edgar H. Schein

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER."

William S. Burroughs

Jehovah has become King … He sits enthroned above the cherubs.

David

Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
Suffer not the old King, for we know the breed.

Rudyard Kipling

"Safety first" has been the motto of the human race for half a million years; but it has never been the motto of leaders. A leader must face danger. He must take the risk and the blame, and the brunt of the storm.

Herbert N. Casson Herbert N. Casson in: The Office Economist (1935)

To manage, learn your management skills from the greatest managers and those who were perfectionist by reading their failures.

Elia M. Ramollah

The old man was as American as it got, but in what she thought of as some very recently archaic way. Someone who would’ve been in charge of something, in America, when grown-ups still ran things.

William Gibson

I think that not relying too heavily on one bank and one bank manager is a good rule to learn.

Richard Branson

A substitute shines brightly as a king
Until a king be by, and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main waters.

William Shakespeare

Theory is a dirty word in some managerial quarters. That is rather curious, because all of us, managers especially, can no more get along without theories than libraries can get along without catalogs — and for the same reason: theories help us make sense of incoming information.

Henry Mintzberg Managers Not MBAs (2005)

The anxiety has been greatly increased by this government's multiplication of exams and emphasis on starting training as a middle manager in a computer company from the age of six.

John Mortimer

The first king was a successful soldier;
He who serves well his country has no need of ancestors.

Voltaire

The born leader is a fiction invented by 'born followers'. Leadership is not a gift at birth; it is an award for growing to full moral stature. It is the only prize that a man must win everyday. The prize is the respect of others, earned by the disciplines that generate self-respect.

Wheeler L. Baker The Cadence (2009)

A king born is better than one made. The best person will not be able to endure such an elevation without changing. Those who are born to it do not falter nor are they overwhelmed by such a position.

Novalis

The king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Leaders are not necessarily popular. For soldiers, the choice between popularity and effectiveness is ultimately no choice at all. Soldiers want to win; their survival depends on it. They will accept, and even take pride in, the quirks and shortcomings of a leader if they believe he can produce success.

Stanley A. McChrystal My Share Of The Task (2013)

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