Leadership Quotes

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George Patton
(from Big Dog's Quotes)

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches.
Robert Burton


Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.
Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.
Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg.
James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland


It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce /
Do not command.
Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche


It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)
Latin Proverb

Let he him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.
Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius