General Leadership Quotes & Sayings

I read about a number of generals and colonels who are said to have wandered about exhorting the troops to advance. That must have been very inspirational! I suspect, however, that the men were more interested and more impressed by junior officers and NCOs who were willing to lead them rather than having some general pointing out the direction in which they should go. — Stephen E. Ambrose

At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him. — Richard Adams

Comparing the three domains, I found that for jobs of all kinds, emotional competencies were twice as prevalent among distinguishing competencies as were technical skills and purely cognitive abilities combined. In general the higher a position in an organization, the more EI mattered: for individuals in leadership positions, 85 percent of their competencies were in the EI domain. — Daniel Goleman

I fully support U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his Global Education First Initiative and the work of U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and the respectful president of the U.N. General Assembly Vuk Jeremic. I thank them for the leadership they continue to give. — Malala Yousafzai

We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the world minority of the world revolutionaries and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for an ideal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view. A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism; both conquered and exterminated at the same time. — Albert Pike

We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ministry leadership in the twenty-first century is difficult enough when the leader maintains appropriate boundaries that flow out of personal understanding of the biblical teaching about leaders. It can be impossible if one allows others in the church, or society in general, to determine the priorities of time and commitment. — Mark A. Searby

The cost of leadership," explains Lieutenant General George Flynn of the United States Marine Corps, "is self-interest. — Simon Sinek

Women, in general, are not part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind. — Coretta Scott King

Voters have soaked up a noggin full of negativity over the last twenty years, with an economy we had to bring back from collapse, plus terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't want to belabor these points, but your listeners know what I'm talking about. I think the antidote is to appreciate what we have, enjoy where we live, and make a positive contribution to our communities. My Cracker Pride campaign is balanced by the spirit of Cincinnatus. He was a farmer and Roman general who was twice made dictator. And he had the forbearance to resign as dictator as soon as he had vanquished Rome's enemies. He became a civic ideal for good leadership. That's the spirit I want in my district and in my campaign. - Veda Rabadel, The Tea & Crackers Campaign. — Peter Prasad

In politics, Joseph Smith was something of a radical. He preached, instead of democracy, a version of theocratic rule within a framework given by his own prophetic leadership. At Nauvoo, Smith affected a Napoleonic uniform and made himself into a general and quasi king of the polity he had constituted. — Noah Feldman

Leave the fishing-rod, Great General, to us sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus. Your game is cities and kings and continents. — Cleopatra

If you wish a general to be beaten, send him a ream full of instructions; if you wish him to succeed, give him a destination, and bid him conquer. — Augustus William Hare

Your employees are your warriors; you are their general. Each sale is a victory. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If you find a community with less production and less inspiring inventions, then know it is a sign of lack of Business Leaders and full of General Managers do not know what they can manage or what they are managing. — Sameh Elsayed

You'll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling: not why it's important in general, but why you're doing something important that no one else is going to get done. — Peter Thiel

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 Danforth Armour

I will not be able to carry the physical burden of leading the Party at the next general election. I hope it will soon be possible for the customary processes of consultation to be carried on within the Party about its future leadership. — Harold Macmillan

You have a life; make a success of it. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

One of the ladies asked about that awful Bobby Kennedy, and Goldwater responded by speaking about the attorney general with touching affection. (Mary) McGrory recalled how Jack Kennedy behaved at a similar stage in his campaign: spouting statistics, attacking carefully chosen enemies and puffing all the right friends, quoting dead Greeks, never cracking a joke lest he remind the voters how young he was. — Rick Perlstein

Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It's this. He's thinking that he can't win the war if he doesn't keep the people on his side. He's thinking that he can't keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population - raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he's thinking that it doesn't matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he'll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn't matter to him very much who he executes; one man's agony is like another's, one mother's tears are no wetter than anybody else's. And that's why he's going to have Sam shot. — James Lincoln Collier

I have run a general election campaign pregnant and ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign commuting to London with a new baby so I already have my system set up. — Lucy Powell

Alignment of vision, mission, values and attitudes need to be matched between you and those you choose to surround yourself with. The cost of training or replacing will be very minimal and less painful if recruitment, selection and positioning are done well. This applies even to general employment processes, whether at leadership or staff levels. — Archibald Marwizi

After further conferences that late spring the following plan was drawn up. Speidel, almost alone among the Army conspirators in the West, survived to describe it: An immediate armistice with the Western Allies but not unconditional surrender. German withdrawal in the West to Germany. Immediate suspension of the Allied bombing of Germany. Arrest of Hitler for trial before a German court. Overthrow of Nazi rule. Temporary assumption of executive power in Germany by the resistance forces of all classes under the leadership of General Beck, Goerdeler, and the trade-union representative, Leuschner. No military dictatorship. Preparation of a "constructive peace" within the framework of a United States of Europe. In the East, continuation of the war. Holding a shortened line between the mouth of the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, the River Vistula and Memel. — William L. Shirer

It's unfortunate when an athlete's talent comes with so little forethought or leadership [ ... ] The Falcons need to start over. If next year's team ends up being young and hungry but fairly average, the last thing you want as a general manager or coach is to have a blowhard cornerback whining about his contract leading the charge, no matter how good he is. — Jeff Schultz

A business is an army;
you are the general,
and your subordinates are your troops.
Victory is achieving your goals.
Great victory is surpassing your goals. — Matshona Dhliwayo

My general rule, which I have followed throughout my coaching career, is that everyone doesn't necessarily get treated the same way, because I'm not sure that's possible. But everyone has to be treated fairly. Moreover, they have to know and trust that they will be treated fairly. Dennis Green, NFL Coach There's nothing worse than the feeling of wishing you had another chance at a play because you weren't ready. Every athlete has those feelings to mull over, and over, and over ... Don't even expose yourself to the possibility of being caught off-guard. — Karch Kiraly

On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department's top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal. — Barton Gellman

The author distinguishes George Washington's leadership from that of another aristocratic general whose temperament was somewhat cold. Unlike him, Washington made the effort to at least appear to suffer with his troops. — John Ferling

A general is powerless without an army.
An army is directionless without a general.
To win battles a general and an army need each other. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Braves win! Braves win!" is a much appreciated validation of the principles and policies that I have adopted, nurtured, and implemented both with the uniformed personnel and the club's administration throughout my tenure as general manager. ...
It rewards the leadership concept of supporting the staff, providing them with a vision and with clear goals, and infusing them with the self-confidence and pride to execute that blueprint at a championship level. It smoothes over the missteps, the disappointments, the crises that we overcome together. — John Schuerholz

I'm out talking about this company (General Electric) seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with nothing to hide. We're a 130-year-old company that has a great record of high-quality leadership and a culture of integrity. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invited a sentry out of the rain and gave him his own dry uniform. — Jean Edward Smith

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. — Bill Kristol

Page holds Musk up as a model he wishes others would emulate - a figure that should be replicated during a time in which the businessmen and politicians have fixated on short-term, inconsequential goals. "I don't think we're doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do," Page said. "I think like we're just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. I don't think most people are doing that, and it's a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you're able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that's really an important thing for the world. That's how we make progress. — Ashlee Vance

The American Civil War lays out the stark contrast: the greatest generals in war are often abundant failures during peacetime, and vice versa. McClellan and Sherman are the sharpest contrasts; but there is also Grant the peacetime drunkard, and Stonewall Jackson the barely tolerable military professor. Only Lee stands out as effective in both peace and war (and even he had a mentally unstable father, and himself may have been dysthymic in his general personality). This conflict reflects, I think, the different psychological qualities of leadership needed in different phases of human activity, peace and war being the two extremes. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

A general never shows despair. He instills confidence in his troops. He leads them forward, even into the mouth of death. — Rick Riordan

Now there are five matters to which a general must pay strict heed. The first of these is administration; the second, preparedness; the third, determination; the fourth, prudence; and the fifth, economy. — Wu Ta-ch'i

The term "leadership" connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6] {37} — Philip Selznick

Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. To deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think does a great disservice ... the progress has been immense. — John McCain

Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Good general differ from bad generals only in the degree to which they resist the psychopathology of the very organization they serve. Norman Dixon — Patrick Hennessey

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

I am a general. My soldiers are the keys and I have to command them. — Vladimir Horowitz

Putting together a care path for a complex disease or condition requires the involvement of doctors, nurses, administrators, and support personnel at all levels and in multiple specialties. Having all those entities on the same team, under the same leadership, and in the same general area greatly facilitates care path development. The — Toby Cosgrove

Westmoreland's body counts were bogus. He believed them - he was not the first general to welcome statistics he wanted to hear. But, in practice, there was every incentive for field commanders to inflate or even invent body counts. It was how their performance was assessed, and it became one of the greatest self-reporting scams in history. The absurd body counts and kill ratios were proof of his leadership. Westmoreland sold them to LBJ, who in turn presented them as fact to the American people. — Mark Bowden

In a free society, we do not imprison those who violate profound cultural taboos or burn them at the stake. But they must be identified as dangerous radicals, not fit to be counted among the priesthood. The reaction is appropriate. To raise the dread question is to open the possibility that the institutions responsible "for the indoctrination of the young" and the other propaganda institutions may be infected by the most dangerous of plagues: insight and understanding. Awareness of the facts might threaten the social order, protected by a carefully spun web of pluralist mysticism, faith in the benevolence of our pure-hearted leadership, and general superstitious belief. An — Noam Chomsky

Nobody could have possibly known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, 'signed' by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton's leadership... no one could have known that the FBI's cointelpro was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular, and the Black Liberation movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics. — Assata Shakur

I've always believed that culture is defined and created from the top down, but it comes to life from the bottom up. This meant that I had to build our culture by working with the leadership group (i.e., the owner, general manager, and executives), the coaching staff, and the football team. To strengthen the culture among the leadership group, it was important to reiterate to the owner, team president, and general manager the shared beliefs, values, and expectations that we had discussed in depth when I was interviewing for the head coaching position. It was important to have collaborative conversations on a regular basis to discuss the changes we were making and why we were making them. — Jon Gordon

Scarcely a general can be found amongst them who admits that he lost a battle by his own bad leadership. — Heinz Linge

One of the hallmarks of great teachers is that they rejoice when their students surpass them. Encouraging an atmosphere of questioning and inviting people to grow within your classroom isn't necessarily easy; which must explain why people who want to create cults or die hard followers discourage questioning in general. They would rather have people reciting their dogma than asking hard questions. — Gudjon Bergmann

Reaching a general understanding that sustainability is the ultimate issue will finally bring us face-to-face with the political challenge of forging a sustainable society during the next few decades. It is a challenge we can meet if we have the leadership and the political will to do so. — Gaylord Nelson

George Grant's writing is an invaluable asset to Americans in general, and to the pro-life Americans in particular. I am grateful for his leadership and courage to defend the sanctity of life, and to tell the truth at all costs. — Beverly LaHaye

general staff and the divisions there exists usually only a single radio wire; between the divisions and the regiments and battalions, there are only messengers. The failure of the Russian radio service came home to them bitterly, and the defeat of the Red leadership can be primarily attributed to it. — Christine Alexander

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

His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his. — Paul Johnson