Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership -- collectively "listening to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required."

- Joseph Jaworski

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

- John C. Maxwell

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

- Jack Welch

Leaders don't force people to follow -- they invite them on a journey.

- Charles S. Lauer

America would be a better place if leaders would do more long-term thinking.

- Wilma Mankiller

To the highest leadership among women it is given to hold steadily in one hand the sacred vessels that hold the ancient sanctities of life, and in the other a flaming torch to light the way for oncoming generations.

- Anna Garlin Spencer

It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

For everyone of us that succeeds, it's because there's somebody there to show you the way out. The light doesn't always necessarily have to be in your family; for me it was teachers and school.

- Oprah Winfrey

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

- Bishop Desmond Tutu

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

- Walter Lippmann

I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.

- Barack Obama

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.

- Don Marquis

The term “power” comes from the Latin posse: to do, to be able, to change, to influence or effect. To have power is to possess the capacity to control or direct change. All forms of leadership must make use of power. The central issue of power in leadership is not Will it be used? But rather Will it be used wisely and well?

- Al Gini

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

- James MacGregor Burns



You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.

- Thich Nhat Hanh



South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu walked by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of one person. A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said, "I don't make way for gorillas." At which Tutu stepped aside, made a deep sweeping gesture, and said, "Ah, yes, but I do."

- Walter Wink



Humans are ambitious and rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best, not our worst.

- Rachel Maddow



A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

- Plato



Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.

- John Naisbitt



I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

- Rosabeth Moss Kantor



The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

- Warren Bennis



What is the manager's job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds trite -- and it is. But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to problems rather than to opportunities, and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimal impact on results.

- Peter F. Drucker



Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

- Stephen Covey



When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.

- Margaret J. Wheatley



A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.

- Jawaharlal Nehru



Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.

- John Gardner



I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.

- Herbert B. Swope



In leadership writ large, mutually agreed upon purposes help people achieve consensus, assume responsibility, work for the common good, and build community.

- Joseph Rost



Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.

- John Gardner



Whoever is providing leadership needs to be as fresh and thoughtful and reflective as possible to make the very best fight.

- Faye Wattleton



Good leaders must first become good servants.

- Robert Greenleaf



What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.

- Elizabeth Dole



[Y]ou must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as human beings.

- James Kouzes and Barry Posner



There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.

- James Kouzes and Barry Posner



Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.

- Robert Louis Stevenson



Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

- Robert Coles



A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

- Henrik Ibsen



Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

- Albert Einstein



But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

- Carl Sagan



It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.

- Ernest Becker



The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

- Peter F. Drucker



Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.

- Edwin H. Friedman