Quotes about leadership
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Margaret Thatcher photo
Frank Baude photo
Bonar Law photo
Enver Hoxha photo

“It didn't take long till the Titoites displayed dominating tendencies, expansionism and hegemonism in their relations with the newly founded states of people's democracy, especially in their relations with our country. As we know they sought to impose their anti-Marxist political, ideological, organisational and state views on us. They went so far as to make despicable attempts to transform Albania into a republic of Yugoslavia. In this unsuccessful and disgraceful undertaking the Titoites encountered our determined opposition. At first, our resistance was uncrystallised because we did not suspect that the Yugoslav leadership had set out on the capitalist and revisionist road. But after some years, when its hegemonic and expansionist tendencies were clearly displayed, we opposed them sternly and unreservedly.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Enver Hoxha, Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1978/yugoslavia/index.htm (Against the anti-socialist views of E. Kardelj) in the book “Directions of the Development of the Political System of Socialist Self-Administration”), Institute of Marxist-Leninist studies of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, Tirana, 1978.
Writings, Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice

“Not blaming ourselves for mistakes is the flip side of not taking credit for our acts of courage or creativity or leadership, or our good ideas.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Tony Blair photo

“It is not a sensible or intelligent response for us in Europe to ridicule American argument or parody their political leadership.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet http://web.archive.org/20041128025440/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page6583.asp, 15 November 2004.
Urging Europe to stop ridiculing American President George W. Bush.
2000s

Daniel Goleman photo

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren Bennis, cited in: Dianna Daniels Booher (1991) Executive's portfolio of model speeches for all occasions. p. 34
1990s

Trey Gowdy photo
Mary Parker Follett photo
Stephen Harper photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
A. James Gregor photo
Kim Jong-il photo

“Our Party’s Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People’s Army.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

"The Songun-based revolutionary line is a great revolutionary line of our era and an ever-victorious banner of our revolution", address to the senior officials of the Central Committee of the Worker's Party (29 January 2003)

Mitt Romney photo
Scott Adams photo
Mao Zedong photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Marvin Bower photo

“Diversity is one of the high priorities that I expected everybody in the leadership position at the university to be committed to.”

Robert J. Birgeneau (1942) Canadian physicist

as quoted in Searching for science policy, by Jonathan B. Imber, published by Transaction Publishers (2002), ISBN 0-765-80163-9, p. 27.

Alex Salmond photo

“Change is what political leadership is about.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Third Session of Parliament (June 30, 2007)

Frank Bainimarama photo

“As long as this bill hangs over our heads there is no credibility in what people in leadership do.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

2000, Reaction to calls from Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for the Military to stay out of politics (30 September 2005)

Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Charles Haughey photo
Robert Menzies photo
Alexander Lukashenko photo

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Peter Drucker, and Warren Bennis, as quoted in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey, p. 101
1980s

Bill Hybels photo
Julia Gillard photo

“It's a big emotional thing to do, to challenge the leadership of your political party. There is nothing pleasant about it, there's nothing fun about it. It's quite a horrible gut-wrenching process.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)

Andrew Scheer photo

“I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody …
It’s a high quality drink, and it’s affordable too.”

Andrew Scheer (1979) 35th Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and MP for Regina—Qu'Appelle

per iPolitics on 27 December 2017 https://ipolitics.ca/2017/12/27/whos-laughing-now-top-ten-funny-stories-canadian-politics-2017/

Báb photo
Henry Ford photo

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

Ron Klain photo
Patrick Morrisey photo

“President Trump is exactly right. On every issue that truly mattered to West Virginia — such as opposing Hillary, Obama, cap & trade, Planned Parenthood, and higher taxes— Joe Manchin pretended to stand with West Virginians, but then voted with Chuck Schumer and the liberal D. C. Democratic leadership. Joe Manchin is a classic ‘say one thing do another’ politician.”

Patrick Morrisey (1967) West Virginia politician

Patrick Morrisey: Joe Manchin Pretends to Stand with West Virginians but ‘Voted with Chuck Schumer’ on Tax Reform http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/29/exclusive-patrick-morrisey-joe-manchin-pretends-to-stand-with-west-virginians-but-voted-with-chuck-schumer-on-tax-reform/ (December 29, 2017)

Muhyiddin Yassin photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Jimmy Carter photo
Stanley A. McChrystal photo

“Many leaders are in the first instance executives whose primary duty is to direct some enterprise or one of its departments or sub-units…
It remains true that in every leadership situation the leader has to possess enough grasp of the ways and means, the technology and processes by means of which the purposes are being realized, to give wise guidance to the directive effort as a whole…
In general the principle underlying success at the coordinative task has been found to be that every special and different point of view in the group affected by the major executive decisions should be fully represented by its own exponents when decisions are being reached. These special points of view are inevitably created by the differing outlooks which different jobs or functions inevitably foster. The more the leader can know at first hand about the technique employed by all his group, the wiser will be his grasp of all his problems…
But more and more the key to leadership lies in other directions. It lies in ability to make a team out of a group of individual workers, to foster a team spirit, to bring their efforts together into a unified total result, to make them see the significance of the particular task each one is doing in relation to the whole.”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 115; as cited in: William Sykes " Visions Of Hope: Leadership http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2012/08/leadership_2.php." Published on August 12, 2012.

“Hindu society has produced many communalists. Admitted. But it has also produced men like Mahatma Gandhi who went on a fast unto death to save the Muslims of Bihar from large-scale butchery. It has produced men like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had the Bihari Hindus bombed from the air when they did not respond to the Mahatma’s call. These have not been isolated men in Hindu society, as Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and M. C. Chagla have been in Muslim society. The Mahatma was a leader whom the whole Hindu society honoured. Pandit Nehru has been kept as Prime Minister over all these years by a majority vote of the same Hindu society. “Now let me give you a sample of the leadership which Muslim society has produced so far, and in an ample measure. The foremost that comes to my mind is Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Immediately after partition, there was a shooting in Sheikhupura in which many Hindus who were waiting for repatriation in a camp, were shot down. There was a great commotion in India, and Pandit Nehru had to take up the matter in his next weekly meeting with Liaqat Ali in Lahore. The Prime Minister of Pakistan had brought the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura with him. The officer explained that the Hindus had broken out of the camp at night in the midst of a curfew, and the police had to open fire. Pandit Nehru asked as to why the Hindus had broken out of the camp. The officer told him that some miscreants had set the camp on fire. Pandit Nehru protested to Liaqat Ali that this was an amazing explanation. Liaqat Ali replied without batting an eye that they had to maintain law and order. This exemplifies the quality of leadership which Muslim society has produced so far. This…”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

From a speech by Hamid Dalwai. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1994). Defence of Hindu society.

Steven Pressfield photo
Joseph Alois Schumpeter photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It's important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the "anti-war" movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist "insurgency" to the American Founding Fathers. To many of these people, any "anti-globalization" movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it's easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it's a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won't go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29).
2000s, 2004

Charles Kennedy photo
Camille Paglia photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries photo
Patrick Dixon photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Jimmy Carter photo
Mohan Bhagwat photo

“The world has tried fundamentalists, Communists and conservatives and has now turned to the Hindus to find solutions to the problems… Hindus should rise in unison and show the world leadership based on values.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

As quoted in " Time for Hindus to show leadership to the world: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/bhagwat-time-for-hindus-to-show-leadership-to-the-world/", The Indian Express (22 November 2014)
2011-2014

Julia Gillard photo

“It was inconceivable to me that the kind of anti-Labor work that Kevin had been involved in – the destabilisation, the leaking – would be rewarded by the leadership.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode three: The Long Shadow (2010–13)

Poul Anderson photo
Sathya Sai Baba photo

“Leadership is Idealism in Action.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Forward to the book Sai Baba's Mahavakya on Leadership by Lt. General Dr. M.L. Chibber, published by Leela Press, December 1996.
THE AVATAR: IN HIS OWN WORDS

Norman Schwarzkopf photo

“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

Quoted in "The Military Quotation Book" (2002) by James Charlton, p. 83
Disputed

F. W. de Klerk photo
Indra Nooyi photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“Without some element of governance from the top, bottom-up control will freeze when options are many. Without some element of leadership, the many at the bottom will be paralysed with choices.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Nur Muhammad Taraki photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Smita Nair Jain photo
Frank Bainimarama photo
Marshall Goldsmith photo
Ricardo Sanchez photo
Asif Ali Zardari photo

“I still don't think like that. Because of Benazir, nobody else [in her party] was thinking about leadership. This position comes about only because of the vacuum that was created with her death.”

Asif Ali Zardari (1955) politician in Pakistan

Zardari at an interview of Newsweek, answering about his presidency http://www.newsweek.com/qa-asif-ali-zardari-pervez-musharrafs-resignation-88063

Lucian Truscott photo

“To a very high degree the measure of success in battle leadership is the ability to profit by the lessons of battle experience.”

Lucian Truscott (1895–1965) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Quoted in Command Missions, A Personal Story, New York, 1954,
ISBN 0-89141-364-2

“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions..”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter Six (Leadership), p. 111.

Regina E. Dugan photo

“The DARPA model has three elements:
Ambitious goals. The agency’s projects are designed to harness science and engineering advances to solve real-world problems or create new opportunities. At Defense, GPS was an example of the former and stealth technology of the latter. The problems must be sufficiently challenging that they cannot be solved without pushing or catalyzing the science. The presence of an urgent need for an application creates focus and inspires greater genius.
Temporary project teams. DARPA brings together world-class experts from industry and academia to work on projects of relatively short duration. Team members are organized and led by fixed-term technical managers, who themselves are accomplished in their fields and possess exceptional leadership skills. These projects are not open-ended research programs. Their intensity, sharp focus, and finite time frame make them attractive to the highest-caliber talent, and the nature of the challenge inspires unusual levels of collaboration. In other words, the projects get great people to tackle great problems with other great people.
Independence. By charter, DARPA has autonomy in selecting and running projects. Such independence allows the organization to move fast and take bold risks and helps it persuade the best and brightest to join.”

Regina E. Dugan (1963) American businesswoman, inventor, and technology developer

“Special Forces” Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Problems (2013)

Don Soderquist photo

““It’s easy to say that we respect other people, but sometimes our actions don’t back up our talk. Those in leadership positions should always show respect for everyone—but especially the people who work for them. When you demonstrate to people that you care about them, they will be much more inclined to follow you.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 134-135.
On Treating Everyone with Respect

Louise Burfitt-Dons photo
David Horowitz photo
Indra Nooyi photo
Pentti Linkola photo

“Humans have evolved a leadership brain. Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders [the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend], even as they respect and reward their own drives.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Paul R. Lawrence, quoted in: " The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-drive-to-acquires-impact-on-globalization," at hbswk.hbs.edu, 23 august 2010.

F. W. de Klerk photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
MS Dhoni photo

“I don't think one can question MS' leadership.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Virat Kohli https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Joe Hockey photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Lucian Truscott photo
Brian Cowen photo

“Hopefully that will be seen as a response, a leadership responding to an issue and therefore one's authority, while it's not as high if you didn't have the problem, it does mean that people say 'well he used his authority to come up with a solution in double-quick time that met with broader public acceptance.”

Brian Cowen (1960) Irish politician

Government comes under further Budget pressure, The Irish Times, 10 October 2008, 2010-06-12 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1023/breaking25.htm,
Explaining why there were radical Government alterations to a budgetary position in October 2008, with the alterations forced by angry public reaction.
2008

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Hafizullah Amin photo
Mao Zedong photo