Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn’t the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.
Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
None but the dupes, who fondly imagine that they are useful to their like, can interest themselves in laying down rules for political guidance amid events which neither they nor any one else foresees, nor ever will foresee.[Il n’y a que des dupes qui puissent se croire utiles à leurs semblables en s’occupant à tracer des principes politiques pour gouverner des événements toujours imprévus.]
Most men want to follow, and what they demand of their leader is prosperity.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need still waters.
It is not faith that distinguishes our real leaders. It is doubt. Their ability to overcome it.
It is not difficult to be a lord, a jarl, or even a king, but it is difficult to be a leader.
It is harder to avoid being ruled ourselves than to rule others.[Il est plus difficile de s’empêcher d’être gouverné que de gouverner les autres.]
In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.
