Quotes & Sayings About Ethical Leadership

Barry Jones once said that Australia is the only country where the word 'academic' is a pejorative. The academic sector has a vibrant and practical role to play in this complex world of ours. Higher education and research are worthy of your much closer attention. Yes, we can be and should be the clever country. Our progress can be within the highest ethical and moral framework. But this will only happen if we place appropriate emphasis on education, research and innovation within a truly international framework. — Gustav Nossal

We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time. — Edward Bernays

When work relationships are reciprocal, ethical leadership emerges for both the executive and the participant unless the executive is trying to control the participant. — Peter J. Dean

I believe that we as the leader of the Free World must provide important leadership on the ethical parameters, the ethical constraints that this research requires. — Ron Kind

Servant-leadership is more than a concept, it is a fact. Any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself as a servant of that group and will act accordingly. — M. Scott Peck

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you're due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings. — Donald Van De Mark

... The form of leadership must be the focus of constant reappraisal. Weber states, for example: 'Each new fact may necessitate the re-adjustment of the relations between end and indispensable means, between desired goals and unavoidable subsidiary consequences.' This process of re-adjustment is ultimately without resolution, for the political and ethical value-spheres are not only in constant opposition but also in permanent flux. It is the task of the politician to negotiate this value conflict and to be decisive as to the value to be pursued and the means to be employed. — Nicholas Gane

Leader of Character: someone who uses influence to achieve a moral or ethical goal. — Dave Anderson

There is no check-box for ethical leadership.
It is an ongoing individual and organizational journey.
We will never know everything that there is to know. — Linda Fisher Thornton

[T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion. — Arthur C. Clarke

How does one undermine the framework of racial reasoning? By dismantling each pillar slowly and systematically. The fundamental aim of this undermining and dismantling is to replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black freedom struggle not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics, and to combat the black nationalist attempt to subordinate the issues and interests of black women by linking mature black self-love and self-respect to egalitarian relations within and outside black communities. The failure of nerve of black leadership is its refusal to undermine and dismantle the framework of racial reasoning. — Cornel West

As I've progressed in my career, I've come to appreciate - and really value - the other attributes that define a company's success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making. — Ursula Burns

At its best, leadership development is not an "event." It's a capacity-building endeavor. It's a process of human growth and development. — Linda Fisher Thornton

Some things transcend politics and policy and the lust for power. Truth, honesty, integrity, decency and fairness are immutable values. They are the ethical substance of life. They ought to be cherished. To sell them out is to sell one's soul. — Michael Short

At the moment people get on boats because they flee terror at home and believe the many years' long wait in UNHCR camps is not a valid option, especially if they have children in their care. After the Vietnam War, Australia took a larger humanitarian intake than at any other period in our history. The Australian community accepted that. They were told why we needed to do it, and why it was the only ethical decent policy that a wealthy advanced country should adopt. — Malcolm Fraser

For thousands of years art was seen as a source of responsible moral and ethical leadership. Today, taking that stance is almost seen as comic. — Jack Beal

Leadership responsibility is multidimensional and cannot be described in one or two words. It is personal, interpersonal, environmental and societal. — Linda Fisher Thornton

In the history of political thinking, there has been always a polar conflict between ethical and the ruthless realistic thoughts of men in general where every greater thought brings in faster understanding yielding an exciting result so fast. — Auliq Ice

A code of ethics cannot be developed overnight by edict or official pronouncement. It is developed by years of practice and performance of duty according to high ethical standards. It must be self-policing. Without such a code, a professional soldier or a group soon loses identity and effectiveness. Once we know our job, have a genuine code of ethics, and maintain unquestioned personal integrity, we have met the first and most demanding challenge of leadership. — Silas L. Copeland