Leadership quotes
3.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside leadership — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"A principle is a principle and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard."
"Never has man reached his destination by persistence in deviation from the straight path."
"A woman as the leader of the Free World is an impossibility. Muslim countries won't talk to you."
"Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before."
"The man who commands efficiently must have obeyed others in the past, and the man who obeys dutifully is worthy of someday being a commander."
"The man who can accept defeat and take his salary without feeling guilty is a thief."
"You can't be that good; you work for me."
"Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours."
"The Internet is disrupting every media industry...people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling."
"Barack, like any leader, is human. And, you know, our challenges in this country isn't finding the next person who's gonna deliver us from our own evil. Because our challenges are us. The challenges that this country faces is how are we as individuals in this society gonna change? What are we gonna do differently?"
"Cooperation with others. Perception, experience, tenacity. Know when to lead and when to follow."
"Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority."
"While the white man keeps the impetus of his own proud, onward march, the dark races will yield and serve, perforce. But let the white man once have a misgiving about his own leadership, and the dark races will at once attack him, to pull him down into the old gulfs."
"When man has nothing but his will to assert--even his good-will--it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains."
"Sanctions alone could not stop Iran's nuclear program. But they did help bring Iran to the negotiating table."
"In Iraq and Syria, American leadership - including our military power - is stopping ISIL's advance, instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group."
"To all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."
"The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership, it would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces."
"Look, Americans will go for leadership that makes sense. Our job, you know, as public officials, is not to put our finger in the air. Our job is to listen, and then lead."
"American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves."
