Honest Leadership Quotes & Sayings

Cronkite is not a genius at anything except being straight, honest, and normal. — Douglas Brinkley

But Frances was beginning to feel that somewhere along the line, property, business, and all that contributes to the creation of wealth, must give back to government enough to guarantee adequate safeguarding of human welfare. The question would be, how to protect human beings against homelessness, starvation, and dependent old age without breaking down human initiative. She was seeing this as one fundamental problem of the government of the future; seeing too that somewhere leaders must arise who will be able to cope with this problem - honest leaders who will see the problem in its many-sidedness, and at last be able to solve it constructively. — May Martin Van Wye

The Tone is the Message. — Kevin T. McCarney

You monkeys only think you're running things, — Dennis McKenna

Future Strong leaders are driven by a core question: What do I want my legacy to be? That requires a lot of searching one's inner truths, and being brutally honest about how that compares to one's daily actions. — Bill Jensen

Hollow Horn Bear knew that to be leader and adviser of his people he must be honest and reliable, and that his word once given in promise must never be taken back. He knew that he must be a man of will-power, standing for the right no matter what happened to him personally; that he must have strength of purpose, allowing no influence to turn him from doing what was best for the tribe. He must be willing to serve his people without thought of pay. He must be utterly unselfish and kind-hearted to the old and poor and stand ready to give to those in need. Above all, he must be unafraid to deal equal justice to all. — Luther Standing Bear

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken. — Ernest Hemingway,

When you get honest with God, you can exchange the fig leaves you used to cover your sin with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. — Johnny Hunt

Fresno is an All America city and deserves real, honest, strong leadership and I pledge to the people of Fresno to be that kind of leader. — Alan Autry

When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who could withstand the light? What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies about American freedom, looking into these mugs shots of the bought and sold? — Thomas Pynchon

Lincoln did not admire those who think it is a mark of sophistication to sneer at patriotism. He believed that God has a will for a country and that is honest man should rejoice in the effort to try to remake his country after the Divine pattern, insofar as that pattern is revealed to him. — Elton Trueblood

Deliberately and purposefully schedule meetings with yourself. These are the most important meetings in the life of one who intends to make their success deliberate. During these meeting you do much of the quality and honest communication with yourself. This is besides the conversations you are always carrying on with yourself in your own head or audibly. That doesn't mean you are crazy, we all do it and we just need to improve the quality and positivity of those conversations. — Archibald Marwizi

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

I love my family; they're such great people and they really love what I do. — Wade Bowen

Merlin prefers to think of space as the regions between all the particles of all the atoms of the universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I think I'm the only senator who does not see a president when I look in the mirror. — Jim DeMint

A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it. — George Friedman

I'd always rather err on the side of openness. But there's a difference between optimum and maximum openness, and fixing that boundary is a judgment call. The art of leadership is knowing how much information you're going to pass on - to keep people motivated and to be as honest, as upfront, as you can. But, boy, there really are limits to that. — Warren G. Bennis

We have to be honest about what we want and take risks rather than lie to ourselves and make excuses to stay in our comfort zone. — Roy Bennett

I'm not so sure liberal democracy as we know it has reached its terminus. It's clear though, that many have genuinely lost confidence in the Australian political class. One reason is that we like to place enormous burdens of expectations on modern political leaders. To be sure such expectations aren't always honest. Just as we want better public services but object to paying the higher taxes that would make them possible, we often want leadership but only if there aren't hard choices with real consequences. — Tim Soutphommasane

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough. — George Bernard Shaw

Leaders fight hard wars against
injustice and unfairness. They
believe that the truth is a weapon;
when triggered, the lie dies. — Israelmore Ayivor

Honest people know that the road to success and virtue always involves shared sacrifice, hard work, and gratification postponed. Telling people otherwise isn't leadership, it is pandering. — Eric Liu

Hotel Conundrum: The continental breakfast. What is it that makes continents so shitty at providing an adequate breakfast? — Demetri Martin

These two qualities of leadership [Integrity and Sincerity] were part of God's law's for the Israelites (Deuteronomy 18:13). God wants His people to show a transparent character, open and innocent of guile.
A prominent businessman once replied to a question: "If I had to name the one most important quality of a top manager, I would say personal integrity." Surely the spiritual leader must be sincere in promise, faithful in discharge of duty, upright in finances, loyal in service, and honest in speech. — J. Oswald Sanders

The goal of tattooing was never beauty. The goal was change. From the scarified Nubian priests of 2000 B.C., to the tattooed acolytes of the Cybele cult of ancient Rome, to the moko scars of the modern Maori, humans have tattooed themselves as a way of offering up their bodies in partial sacrifice, enduring the physical pain of embellishment and emerging changed beings. Despite — Dan Brown

We completed meetings with leaders from over a dozen ministries over a ten-day period. Toward the end of our journey, we asked our Sri Lankan host for his feedback. After about the fourth day, he had become convinced that we were actually there to listen, so his feedback was honest. He said (and I'm paraphrasing):
Paul and Christie, you and your leadership training are welcome here in Sri Lanka. If you host your training in a nice Colombo (Sri Lanka's capital) hotel with a nice venue and a buffet lunch, we can get fifty to one hundred pastors and ministry leaders to come. They will come, and you can get some great pictures for
your newsletter. Then, after the seminar, they will take your manual home with them and put it on the shelf with [U.S. megachurch pastor's] training manual and [another U.S. megachurch pastor's] training manual and [a well-known U.S. leadership trainer's] training manual, and they will go about their own ministry in their own way. — Paul Borthwick

There's an article about Chicago closing dozens of schools and I should probably read it because it seems important and relevant - but to be honest, the headline about the professor in Florida telling students to 'stomp on Jesus' has really got my attention. — Tucker Elliot

One presidential advisor to another: If the world made sense, we'd all have to find honest work. — Tom Clancy

Soldiers must possess integrity in order to build trust and confidence in themselves, our leadership, and the American public. Among the things I've learned during my career is that you must be honest with everyone about everything. — Glen E. Morrell

Every time you get rejected, say: 'Next!' — Mark Victor Hansen

Of the various qualities of leadership, women were rated far, far ahead of men on being "honest," "intelligent," "compassionate," "outgoing," and "creative," and were considered just as "hardworking" and "ambitious" as men. Men were perceived as excelling only in being "decisive."1 The preference for men as leaders, then, suggests that the frame for respondents emphasized the role of decisiveness in leadership. — Linda Tarr-Whelan

Leadership can be defined in one word - honesty. You must be honest with the players and honest with yourself. — Earl Weaver

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction. — Mark Twain

I'm always writing music. I sort of do it obsessively, for good or for bad. It's good that it keeps me going, but it's bad because it really is sort of like an obsession where you can't stop sometimes and it'll keep you up at night and ruin your weekend. — Hamilton Leithauser

And that was how the young writer found love, just when he had stopped looking for it. — Marcus Sedgwick

My power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens, who are straight and honest, cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest. That is all the strength that I have. — Theodore Roosevelt

Successful leaders develop effective strategies for maintaining their boundaries ... Most time bandits don't know any better. And being a time bandit is a matter of context. One person's time bandit is another person's pleasant diversion ... Instead of gritting our teeth to be polite and resenting the time bandit for holding us up, the best choice is to be honest. We cannot expect another person to honor our needs unless we affirm them ourselves. — Diane Dreher

Absolutely nothing. That's what I'm going to do for two weeks. Not think. If I start to think, I'm going to think really hard about not thinking until I quit thinking. — James Dashner