Leadership Quotes

Make sure your priorities line up with your values.

~ Michael Barbarulo

You hire the best people you can possibly find. Then it's up to you to create an environment where great people decide to stay and invest their time.

~ Rich Lesser

Most people overestimate others' talents and underestimate their own.

~ Orrin Woodward

Chits knew no ideology.

~ Rick Perlstein

Patriotism without criticism has no head, criticism without patriotism has no heart.

~ Allen C. Guelzo

You can buy a man's time, you can buy a man's physical presence at a certain place, you can even buy a measured number of skilled muscular motions per hour or day. But you cannot buy enthusiasm, you cannot buy initiative, you cannot buy loyalty; you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, and souls. You have to earn these things.

~ Clarence Francis

To be given loyalty is to be infused like a gemstone, to be granted the frightful license to destroy not only one's self, but all within one's care.

~ Brandon Sanderson

If you aren't loyal to the few you won't be blessed with the many.

~ Orrin Woodward

Observe the behavior of your environment carefully for clues as to what is acceptable and rewarded.

~ Bonnie Marcus

What is assertive in a man can appear abrasive in a woman, and female leaders risk appearing too feminine or not feminine enough.

~ Barbara Kellerman

If we can spend more time uprooting vices and rooting virtues, our world will be safer and better.

~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

To guess is no good, but to anticipate is GREAT.

~ Filipe Alou

The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence (illusory superiority), making leaders use their “gut” when they should be more rational.

~ Paul Gibbons

The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.

~ David G. Jones

You can't make a difference unless you are different.

~ Chris Hodges

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members “could be dealt with only in bodies and droves.

~ Robert A. Caro

While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men— a great reader of men.

~ Robert A. Caro

Few emotions are more ephemeral in the political world than gratitude: appreciation for past favors. Far less ephemeral, however, is hope: the hope of future favors. Far less ephemeral is fear, the fear that in the future, favors may be denied.

~ Robert A. Caro

Psychology of small things rules.

~ Stefan Fatsis

Jason (Elam, a Christian) is the kid in high school who gets along equally well with the jocks, the brains, the geeks, and the slackers, and influences their behavior.

~ Stefan Fatsis

The great actors always play themselves.

~ Scott Farris

A newcomer could ascertain the identity of a town's true leaders – which storekeeper was respected, which farmer was listened to other farmers – only through endless hours of subtle probing of reticent men.

~ Robert A. Caro

One biographer said Kennedy lived along the line where charm became power.

~ Scott Farris

Twitter gives people an illusionary sense of leadership.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

his was a profession in which a good leader constantly had to adapt to new weapons, whether he liked them or not

~ David Halberstam

Leaders need to sacrifice power-over to get power-to.

~ Paul Gibbons

Strategic coherence is more important than strategic perfection.

~ Paul Gibbons

Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.

~ Paul Gibbons

Yesterday’s decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows.

~ Paul Gibbons

It is time to euthanize change management.

~ Paul Gibbons

The notion of business as usual is a harmful myth.

~ Paul Gibbons

Our relations seemed poor to me, and I wasn't surprised that the US intelligence picture in the Horn of Africa was weak. Much of what I read consisted of recycled news headlines repackaged as intelligence. Real, valuable intelligence only came from real people, yet we hadn't done much to meet and work with the people.

~ Eric Greitens

(John F.) Kennedy was an elitist and not a populist. He was enthralled by a certain British aristocratic view of politics in which an enlightened ruling class makes reasoned, rational decisions that are in the interest of the more emotional and easily manipulated masses.

~ Scott Farris

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.

~ George Friedman

Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.

~ Richard Heuer

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy.

~ George Friedman

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

~ Sam Tanenhaus

In carrying out a peacekeeping mission where the grand strategy is to maintain peace and order by persuading armed parties or other hostile elements to back away from aggressive activities, military strength is not a definite measure of success; neither could material contribution alone guarantees the winning of the hearts and minds of the people. What appears to be important is the day-to-day conduct of the peacekeepers on the ground; those who uphold the principles of neutrality and impartiality, as well as those who are able to carry all aspects of its operational duties exceptionally.

~ Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

~ Max Mckeown