Quotes about lead

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Speech to Conservative Central Council ("The Historic Choice") (20 March 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102990
Leader of the Opposition
Context: Every step this Socialist Government takes to seize more power over our daily lives diminishes those lives and the freedom which is their essence and their strength. One of our principal and continuing priorities when we are returned to office will be to restore the freedoms which the Socialists have usurped. Let them learn that it is not a function of the State to possess as much as possible. It is not a function of the State to grab as much as it can get away with. It is not a function of the State to act as ring-master, to crack the whip, dictate the load which all of us must carry or say how high we may climb. It is not a function of the State to ensure that no-one climbs higher than anyone else. All that is the philosophy of Socialism. We reject it utterly for, however well-intended, it leads in one direction only: to the erosion and finally the destruction of the democratic way of life.

Book I, Section I
The Satanic Bible (1969)
Context: In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!
Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!
For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God"!
I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commandments.
Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!
I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The TRUE prince of evil — the king of slaves!
No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!
I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!
I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard; I uplift a broad-axe, and split open his worm-eaten skull!
I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophically whited sepulchers and laugh with sardonic wrath!

Nobel lecture (11 December 1952)
Context: It is an old story in physics that higher resolving power leads to new effects. We remember that the magnetic moment of the nucleus was itself discovered through the hyperfine structure of lines in the visible spectrum. The nuclear resonance line in a liquid or gas can be remarkably narrow, as you have already seen. As soon as the reason for this was recognized, it became clear that the only practical limit on resolution was the inhomogeneity of the magnetic field applied to the specimen.

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: From the National standpoint nothing can be worse - nothing can be full of graver menace - for the National life than to have the Federal courts active in nullifying State action to remedy the evils arising from the abuse of great wealth, unless the Federal authorities, executive, legislative, and judicial alike, do their full duty in effectually meeting the need of a thoroughgoing and radical supervision and control of big inter-State business in all its forms. Many great financiers, and many of the great corporation lawyers who advise them, still oppose any effective regulation of big business by the National Government, because, for the time being, it serves their interest to trust to the chaos which is caused on the one hand by inefficient laws and conflicting and often unwise efforts at regulation by State governments, and, on the other hand, by the efficient protection against such regulation afforded by the Federal courts. In the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all the very class which it at present benefits. The continuation of such conditions would mean that the corporations would find that they had purchased immunity from the efficient exercise of Federal regulative power at the cost of being submitted to a violent and radical local supervision, inflamed to fury by having repeatedly been thwarted, and not chastened by exercised responsibility. To refuse to take, or to permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk.

"Here, There and Everywhere" form Revolver (1966) - Full lyrics at Songfacts.com http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=105
Lyrics, The Beatles
Context: To lead a better life,
I need my love to be here.
Here, making each day of the year,
Changing my life with a wave of her hand.
Nobody can deny that there's something there.

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: Organised religion allying itself to theology and often more concerned with its vested interests than with the things of the spirit encourages a temper which is the very opposite of science. It produces narrowness and intolerance, credulity and superstition, emotionalism and irrationalism. It tends to close and limit the mind of man and to produce a temper of a dependent, unfree person.
Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, so Voltaire, said … perhaps that is true, and indeed the mind of man has always been trying to fashion some such mental image or conception which grew with the mind's growth. But there is something also in the reverse proposition: even if God exist, it may be desirable not to look up to Him or to rely upon Him. Too much dependence on supernatural forces may lead, and has often led, to loss of self-reliance in man, and to a blunting of his capacity and creative ability. And yet some faith seems necessary in things of the spirit which are beyond the scope of our physical world, some reliance on moral, spiritual, and idealistic conceptions, or else we have no anchorage, no objectives or purpose in life. Whether we believe in God or not, it is impossible not to believe in something, whether we call it a creative life-giving force, or vital energy inherent in matter which gives it its capacity for self-movement and change and growth, or by some other name, something that is as real, though elusive, as life is real when contrasted with death. <!-- p. 524 (1946)

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: It is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have been amassed not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits upon the community; and this, no matter what may have been the conscious purpose of those amassing them. There is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the men of wealth as such; and it ought to be unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves, which tends to limit opportunity, and therefore to shut the door of success against poor men of talent, and, finally, which entails the possibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship.

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Participants in the Conference Organized by the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, Clementine Hall, Saturday, 21 October 2017. https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/october/documents/papa-francesco_20171021_convegno-pcpne.html
2010s, 2017
Context: We recognize the great development there has been over the course of recent decades with regard to disability. Greater awareness of the dignity of each person, especially of the weakest, has led to the espousal of courageous positions for the inclusion of those who live with various forms of handicap, so that no one should feel like a stranger in his own home. Yet, at the cultural level, through a prevailing false understanding of life, expressions that harm the dignity of these persons still persist.
An often narcissistic and utilitarian vision, unfortunately, leads not a few to consider persons with disabilities as marginal, without grasping their manifold human and spiritual richness. In the common mind-set, there is still too strong an attitude of rejection of this condition, as if it prevents one from achieving happiness and self-fulfilment. It is demonstrated by the eugenic trend of ending the lives of the unborn who show some form of imperfection.
In reality, we all know many people who, despite even serious fragility, have found, albeit with difficulty, the path of a good life, rich with meaning. Likewise, on the other hand, we know people who are seemingly perfect, yet they despair! After all, it is a perilous deception to think we are invulnerable. As said by a girl whom I met on my recent journey to Colombia: vulnerability is intrinsic to the essential nature of mankind.
The answer is love: not that false, saccharine and sanctimonious love, but that which is true, concrete and respectful.

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which it knows as its own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able to call this home thine. Till then it will struggle on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead me across." When this home of mine is made thine, that very moment is it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This "I" is restless. It is working for a gain which can never be assimilated with its spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine," everything remains the same, only it is taken across.
Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Where can I join thee unless in this my work transformed into thy work? If I leave my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing.

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.
Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way. Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States. Ultimately, it is that faith — those ideals — that are the true measure of American leadership.

"The Designers and the Politicians" (1962), later published in Beyond Left & Right : Radical Thought for Our Times (1968) by Richard Kostelanetz, p. 368
1960s
Context: Technology paces industry, but there's a long lag in the process. Industry paces economics. It changes the tools, a great ecological change. And in that manner we come finally to everyday life.
The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.

Fragment No. 16
Variant translations:
We dream of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Inward goes the secret path. Eternity with its worlds, the past and the future, is in us or nowhere.
As translated in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
We dream of journeys through the cosmos — Is the cosmos not then in us? We do not know the depths of our own spirit. — The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with its worlds — the past and the future.
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

Originally Frederick William Faber, sermon "On Kindness in General", found in Spiritual Conferences, a collection of his oratory, ca. 1860
Misattributed
Context: No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)
Context: It’s not a sign of strength. Anybody can make threats. Anyone can move an army. Anyone can show off a missile. That doesn’t make you strong. It does not lead to security, or opportunity, or respect. Those things don't come through force. They have to be earned. And real strength is allowing an open and participatory democracy, where people can choose their own leaders and choose their own destiny. And real strength is allowing a vibrant society, where people can think and pray and speak their minds as they please, even if it’s against their leaders -- especially if it’s against their leaders. Real strength is allowing free and open markets that have built growing, thriving middle classes and lifted millions of people out of poverty.

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)
Context: When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads; when the first response to a challenge is to send in our military -- then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and neglect the broader strategy we need for a safer, more prosperous world. That’s what our enemies want us to do. I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership. We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now. And around the globe, it is making a difference. [... ] That’s how America leads -- not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.

The Crisis No. IV.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776&ndash;1783)
Context: There is a mystery in the countenance of some causes, which we have not always present judgment enough to explain. It is distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can beat them, and in which we have always beaten them, whenever they made the attempt. The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: But I don't think God wants us to stop there. For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate. Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias; that we embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure. Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal. So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote. By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God’s grace.

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Context: The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.

2013, Commencement Address at Ohio State University (May 2013)
Context: Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we know it can be. But it requires your dedicated, informed, and engaged citizenship. This citizenship is a harder, higher road to take. But it leads to a better place. It is how we built this country – together. It is the question President Kennedy posed to the nation at his inauguration; the dream that Dr. King invoked. It does not promise easy success or immediate progress. But it has led to success, and it has led to progress. 
That brings me to the second thing I ask of you – I ask you to persevere.

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)
Context: When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads; when the first response to a challenge is to send in our military -- then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and neglect the broader strategy we need for a safer, more prosperous world. That’s what our enemies want us to do. I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership. We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now. And around the globe, it is making a difference. [... ] That’s how America leads -- not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.

"Oenone", st. 14
Context: Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

"Freedom as Teacher" in Human Options : An Autobiographical Notebook (1981).
Context: There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

The Internet document known as "History Forgotten" or "Forsaken Roots" misquotes the opening of this section as follows: "It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible. Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, our religion and morality are the indispensable supports."
1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.

Quoted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious', The Guardian, Emma Brockes https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-greta-thunberg-hope-contagious-climate|When (29 June 2019)
2019

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), Chapter three, p. 53

Source: "I am a Revolutionary Black Woman" (1970), p. 483

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

Source: 1910s, Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), p. 21

Speech to the opening of the fourth German Industrial Fair in Berlin (26 September 1953), quoted in The Times (28 September 1953), p. 5

York Times Obituary, 9/20/2005 https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/international/europe/simon-wiesenthal-nazi-hunter-dies-at-96.htmlNew

Ante-Nicene Christian Library: v. 3 p. 34
Address to the Greeks

"Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry" (1771)
Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)
Original: (fr) La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d’un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n’en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé.

George S. Patton: "Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way", as quoted in Pocket Patriot: Quotes from American Heroes (2005) edited by Kelly Nickell, p. 157
Misattributed

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Umar ibn al-Khattab, Vol. 2, p. 389-390, also quoted in At-Tabqaat ul-Kabir, Vol. 3, p. 339
Last Advise

LinkedIn (January 2021)

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873), "Appendix A"

Source: Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929), p. 30

H. E. Butler's translation:
Indeed nature itself seems to have given music as a boon to men to lighten the strain of labour: even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song. Nor is this function of music confined to cases where the efforts of a number are given union by the sound of some sweet voice that sets the tune, but even solitary workers find solace at their toil in artless song.
Book I, Chapter X, 16
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Original: (la) Atque eam natura ipsa videtur ad tolerandos facilius labores velut muneri nobis dedisse, si quidem et remigem cantus hortatur; nec solum in iis operibus in quibus plurium conatus praeeunte aliqua iucunda voce conspirat, sed etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione solatur.

Source: Band of Brothers, episode Crossroads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yggdVyan4XI

Source: Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics | Robinson's Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxmZ4AVac7U

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Every Day

Source: The Book Thief

Source: Selected Letters

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

Source: Deadhouse Gates

Source: P.S. I Love You

Source: The Collected Stories

As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/jun/05/guardianletters3

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), P. 36

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Gilbert to Helen

Source: Revolutionary Road

Source: Second Glance

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Source: Showdown

Source: The Mark of a Man

Source: Catching Fire

July 14, 1763, p. 121
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol 2

Source: The Well of Ascension

"The Grizzly and the Gadgets", The New Yorker (date unknown); Further Fables for Our Time (1956); This statement is derived from one of Henry David Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Source: City of Ashes

Source: Black Blood

Source: P.S. I Love You

Lightsong the Bold
Warbreaker (2009)

"My Speech to the Graduates"
Side Effects (1980)
Variant: Mankind is facing a crossroad - one road leads to despair and utter hopelessness and the other to total extinction - I sincerely hope you graduates choose the right road
Source: Mere Anarchy

Source: Selected Poems

Source: Beautiful Lies

Source: Levels of Life

Source: The Neverending Story

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Source: I Capture the Castle

Source: White Wolf

Source: The Last Guardian

Source: Mr Galliano's Circus

Source: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice