Quotes About Leadership

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top.  You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you have always played it.

— Richard M. Nixon

When you soar like an eagle, you attract the hunters.

— Milton S. Gould

To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

— Will Rogers

 ‘Tis skill, not strength that governs a ship.

— Thomas Fuller

When a leader is in the Democratic party he’s a boss; when he’s in the Republican party he’s a leader.

— Harry S. Truman

A leader is a dealer in hope.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about him that he knows.

— Clarence B. Randall

They be blind leaders of the blind.  And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

— Matthew 15:14

Be willing to make decisions.  That’s the most important quality in a good leader.  Don’t fall victim to what I call the “ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome.”  You must be willing to fire.

— T. Boone Pickens

You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

The art of leadership...consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.

— Adolf Hitler

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

— William Penn

In time of peril, like the needle to the lodestone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.

— Herman Melville

I must follow them.  I am their leader.

— Andrew Bonar Law

I never give them hell.  I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.

— Harry S. Truman

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau

A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.

— Arthur W. Radford

Ye are the light of the world.  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.  Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

— Matthew 5:14-16

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.

— Groucho Marx

Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.

— Sign on desk of broadcasting executive Ted Turner

I will do my best.  That is all I can do.  I ask for your help — and God’s.

— Lyndon B. Johnson, on arriving in Washington, D.C., on the evening of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, November 22, 1963

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss...The leader works in the open and the boss in covert.  The leader leads, and the boss drives.

— Theodore Roosevelt