Who Said It? · Memorable Quotes

Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.

- Marian Anderson

If you want to succeed,you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Good leadership consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God.

- John D. Rockefeller

The leaven of true leadership cannot lift others unless we are with and serve those to be led.

- Spencer W. Kimball

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

When you are in any contest you should work as if there were - to the very last minute - a chance to lose it.

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired in the final analysis, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - speech, April 2, 1957
We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1963
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.

On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that all their efforts shall not have been in vain.

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - A speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 1957
Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.

We merely want to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them, to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours, so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The only real training for leadership is leadership.

- Anthony Jay

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

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. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

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

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.

The computer is a moron.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

Leadership is based on inspiration, not domination; on cooperation, not intimidation.

- William Arthur Wood

Jingshen is the Mandarin word for spirit and vivacity. It is an important word for those who would lead, because above all things, spirit and vivacity set effective organizations apart from those that will decline and die.

- James L. Hayes - Memos for Management: Leadership, 1983

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them -- this is of the essence of leadership.

- Theodore H. White - The Making of the President, 1960

It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.

- Robert D. Kaplan - Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (Book)

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.
Ralph Nader
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

- Ralph Nader - The Pacific Sun, March 21, 1981

you may not be responsible for being down. but you are respinsible for getting up.
Jesse Jackson
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.

- Jesse Jackson - B.F.A. 1982

If there is no gardener there is no garden.
Stephen R. Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The way we see the problem is the problem.
Stephen R. Covey - Principle-centered Leadership
An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.

- Stephen R. Covey - First things First

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry S Truman - in Look, Apr. 3, 1956
I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
Harry S Truman - Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.

We can never tell what is in store for us.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry S Truman - August 8, 1950
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry S Truman - Letter to his sister, Nov. 14, 1947
All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
Harry S Truman - quoted by Time, June 9, 1975
I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.

- Harry S Truman

Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.

Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.
Harold Geneen - Chairman, ITT Corp.
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

- Harold Geneen

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.

- Elaine Agather