"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

(Theodore Roosevelt)

"Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too."

(Robert Half)

"Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after."

(Lord Byron)

(from a napkin at Journees de la Presse, hotel Méridien Montparnasse, Paris, France)

"Managers are born on the job. Leaders are born when they are seven."

(Gert Van Mol)

"He who has never learned to obey can not be a good commander."

(Aristotle)

"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

(Thomas Carlyle)

"A leader is a deal in hope."

(Napoleon Bonaparte)

"The real leader has no need to lead-- he is content to point the way."

(Henry Miller)

"Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

(Dwight D. Eisenhower)

"The whole thing here is the organization. Whatever we accomplish belongs to our entire group, a tribute to our combined effort."

(Walt Disney)

"I have a blind faith in the policy that quality, tempered with good judgment and showmanship, will win out against all odds."

(Walt Disney)

"Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work it until it's done and done right."

(Walt Disney)

"You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream."

(Walt Disney)

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way."

(Abraham Lincoln)

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion."

(Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame)

"If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission."

(Admiral Grace Hopper)

"The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such."

(Andre Maurois)

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

(Eleanor Roosevelt)

"Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table."

(Hubert H. Humphrey)

"The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way."

(Henry Miller)

"All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership."

(John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. economist “The Age of Uncertainty”)

"It's amazing how many cares disappear when you decide not to be something, but to be someone."

(Coco Chanel)

"Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint."

(Lewis H. Lapham)

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

(Bishop Desmond Tutu)

There is no such thing as a perfect leader...

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.

(Liu Shao-ch'i)

People ask the difference...

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. . . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

(Theodore Roosevelt)

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.

(Katharine Hepburn)

E pluribus unum. (Out of many, one.)

E pluribus unum. (Out of many, one.) - Motto for the Seal of the United States. Adopted 20 June 1782, recommended by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, 10 Aug. 1776, and proposed by Swiss artist Pierre Eugene du Simitière.
It had originally appeared on the title page of the Gentleman's Journal (Jan. 1692).

In organizations, real power and energy is...

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.

(Margaret Wheatly, Leadership and the New Science)

Excellence is not an accomplishment. It is a spirit, a never-ending process.

(Lawrence M. Miller)

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters.

(Albert Einstein)

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.

(Max DePree)

The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.

(Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers, Improving Leadership Effectiveness)

A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: "Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain."

(Max DePree)

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.

(Peter Drucker)

Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them!

(Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin)

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call.

(Warren Bennis)

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

(Winston Churchill)

I used to think that running an organization...

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it, it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.

(Warren Bennis)

When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally.

(Lao Tse)

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

(Ralph Nader)

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.

(Peter Drucker)

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

(George Patton)

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.

(Peter Drucker)

Hell, there are no rules here-we're trying to accomplish something.

(Thomas A. Edison)

Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for.

(Peter F. Drucker, American Management Guru)

To live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.

(Stephen Covey)

Make sure the outside of you is a good reflection of the inside of you.

(Jim Rohn)

Any company that cannot imagine the future won’t be around to enjoy it.

(Anonymous)

It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself.

(Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)

(Latin Proverb)