Famous Quotes & Sayings

Peter Drucker

The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

Peter Drucker

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Peter Drucker

Leaders grow; they are not made.

Peter Drucker

The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege.

Peter Drucker

The person who will make the greatest contribution to a company is the mature person-and you cannot have maturity if you have no life or interest outside the job.

Peter Drucker

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

John Updike

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Nancy Pelosi

I would do almost anything Tina Fey asks me to do.

Marcel Proust

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Kevin Rudd

Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals, the society in which they live and the economy in which they work. Most critically, our responsibility in this parliament is how that power is used: whether it is used for the benefit of the few or the many.

Kelly Ayotte

[Putin] is a bully. And bullies only understand when we punch them in the nose, but we need to do that economically.

Kelley Armstrong

When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

The important thing is that we recognize our President's leadership, that he is not saying: I am going to walk away from this. He is saying: I am going to do the right thing.

Jody Williams

It's sort of easy to make a challenge. It's very hard to put the full fate of your government behind the challenge and make it happen. That's real leadership.

Joe Biden

A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It's the civil rights of our day. It's the issue of our day.

Jimmy Haslam

The really great athletes make their news on the field, not off the field.

Mao Zedong

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

Lou Gerstner

The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we're gunning for leadership.

Lou Gerstner

If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?

Lou Gerstner

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.

John Gardner

Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.

John F. Kennedy

I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.

John F. Kennedy

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

John F. Kennedy

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.

John F. Kennedy

Only in winter can you tell which trees are truly green. Only when the winds of adversity blow can you tell whether an individual or a country has steadfastness.

Jonah Lehrer

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.

All of our seniors are going to play big roles for us. They have been big all year with their leadership and how they have stepped up.

Herman Wouk

A leader can't dash ahead around the bend out of sight.

John McCain

Courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility

John Hume

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

John Howard

You are not prime minister of Australia because of some kind of process of divine selection. You are prime minister of Australia through the gift of the Australian people.

John Heider

The wise leader speaks rarely and briefly. After all, no other natural outpouring goes on and on. It rains and then it stops. It thunders and then it stops.

John Haggai

The leader seeks to communicate his vision to his followers. He captures their attention with his optimistic intuition of possible solutions to their needs. He influences them by the dynamism of his faith.