Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about leadership

138 quotes from 99 people

Most readBy personPage 7 of 10

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.
George S. Patton1885–1945
- Decisions
- Fear
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton1885–1945War As I Knew It (1947) “Reflections and Suggestions”
Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
George S. Patton1885–1945War As I Knew It (1947) “Reflections and Suggestions”
If you can’t get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?
George S. Patton1885–1945
A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances.
George S. Patton1885–1945
There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent.
George S. Patton1885–1945War As I Knew It (1947)
Honesty is the axis on which leadership spins.
Mike Penceborn 1959Remarks at Reagan Library, C-SPAN.org (September 8, 2016)
- Truth & Lies
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, , p. 78
- Decisions
- Intelligence
I return you many thanks for the honour you have done me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.
William Pitt the Younger1759–1806Speech at the Guildhall, City of London (9 November 1805), quoted in The War Speeches of William Pitt (1915), p. 351
- Patriotism
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,⁠—nor the human race, as I believe
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (c. 375 BC), Book VIn context
- Government
- Philosophy
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Colin Powell1937–2021
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
Colin Powell1937–2021
When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.
Colin Powell1937–2021
- Decisions
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
Colin Powell1937–2021The Powell Principles (2003)
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions.
Marcel Proust1871–1922Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: “Madame Swann at Home”
- Decisions