“Groups follow the most charismatic person, even though there is no correlation between being a good speaker and having great ideas.”

Downey, Maureen (interviewer), "Teaching introverts: Do schools prefer big talkers to big thinkers?", The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 5, 2016.

Source: Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005, p. 1

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 393-394
Context: All leaders are human. They get tired, angry, and jealous and carry the same range of emotions and frailties common to mankind. Most leaders periodically display them. The leaders I most admired were totally human but constantly strove to be the best humans they could be. Leaders make mistakes, and they are often costly. The first reflex is normally to deny the failure to themselves; the second is to hide it from others, because most leaders covet a reputation for infallibility. But it's a fool's dream and inherently dishonest. There are few secrets to leadership. It is mostly just hard work. More than anything else it requires self-discipline. Colorful, charismatic characters often fascinate people, even soldiers. But over time, effectiveness is what counts. Those who lead most successfully do so while looking out for their followers' welfare.

"Meat-Eaters"
The Life of Birds (1998)

Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (2016)

A Life Decoded by Craig Venter, p. 129 http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Life_Decoded.html?id=jx9JsHry1PgC&pg=PA129

What is Art? (1897)
Context: The good is the everlasting, the pinnacle of our life. … life is striving towards the good, toward God. The good is the most basic idea … an idea not definable by reason … yet is the postulate from which all else follows. But the beautiful … is just that which is pleasing. The idea of beauty is not an alignment to the good, but is its opposite, because for most part, the good aids in our victory over our predilections, while beauty is the motive of our predilections. The more we succumb to beauty, the further we are displaced from the good.... the usual response is that there exists a moral and spiritual beauty … we mean simply the good. Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite.

As quoted in Saul Leiter (2008) by Agnès Sire
Context: I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.