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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:

We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases.

C. West Churchman

I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them.

Mark Oliphant

That's democratic leadership. It's like a flock of geese. They make the calls from the back. ...If you really are leading, everybody is leading.

Wynton Marsalis Wynton Marsalis on What Jazz Can Teach Us About Democracy (2026)

A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management.

W. Edwards Deming The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

[In France] a minister has twenty assistants, where the Administrative Theory says that a manager at the head of a big undertaking should not have more than five or six.

Henri Fayol Henri Fayol cited in: Morgen Witzel (2001)

The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.

Jesus

Lack of specificity around stakeholder identity remains a serious obstacle to the further development of stakeholder theory and its adoption in actual practice by business managers. Nowhere is this shortcoming more evident than in stakeholder theory's treatment of the constituency known as 'community.

R. Edward Freeman Freeman (2001)

The project manager’s job is not an easy one. Project managers may have increasing responsibility, but very little authority. This lack of authority can force them to “negotiate” with upper-level management as well as functional management for control of company resources. They may often be treated as outsiders by the formal organization.

Harold Kerzner Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (1979)

Leadership: whatever happens, you're responsible. If it doesn't happen, you're responsible.

Donald Trump

Even in thy tent I’ll seize the blooming prize,
Thy loved Briseïs with the radiant eyes.
Hence shalt thou prove my might, and curse the hour
Thou stood’st a rival of imperial power;
And hence, to all our hosts it shall be known,
That kings are subject to the gods alone.

Homer

Most people are indifferent, unless their self-interest is at stake. Then there are the chronic complainers. [...] Fortunately, there are those in every organization, few but invaluable, who know their responsibilities and seem to thrive on meeting them. They get things done. These are the ones we all rely upon, the people who take care of the rest of us, quiet leaders.

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

According to my judgement, the French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon opened the eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before and the people thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say that whatever they did as well done. Through this present change it is more difficult to rule the people.

Theodoros Kolokotronis Kolokotronis's Memoirs (2013)

Success ultimately rests on small things, lots of small things. Leaders have to have a feel for small things — a feel for what is going in in the depths of an organization where small things reside. The more senior you become, the more you are isolated by pomp and staff, and the harder and more necessary it becomes to know what is going on six floors down. One way is to leave the top floor and its grand accoutrements and get down into the bowels for real. Don't tell anyone you are coming. Avoid advance notices that produce crash cleanups, frantic preparations, and PowerPoint presentations.

Colin Powell It Worked For Me (2012)

As a subject sues by attorney, so does the King; with a little variation of form, from decency: instead of saying, "The King sues by," it is said, "sues for the King"; and yet, "Coram domino rege venit dominus rex per attornatum suum, et inde producit seetam," was held to be good. Hale, Chief Justice, said, it was but an unmannerly way of declaring for the King.

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian.

William A. Henry III

I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week.

Eugene V. Debs The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others.
The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.

Haile Selassie

the net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers.

David Harvey David Harvey (2006)

Systems analysis, conceived in a policy sciences framework, is the macro instrument of the systems manager for understanding, evaluating and improving human systems — which are defined as goal oriented interdependent units incorporating people, organization and some form of technology for control, administration or output.

Richard F. Ericson Richard F. Ericson (1979)

If we were at war and wanted to choose a leader most capable of helping us to save ourselves and conquer the enemy, should we choose one whom we knew to be the slave of the belly, or of wine, or lust, or sleep?

Xenophon

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