‘Big shots are little shots who kept shooting’ & other thoughts on Leadership

“Thoughts On Leadership” is a very short book with some time-tested insights on leadership qualities — courage, judgment, values etc. Collecting distilled advices from Tacitus to Henry Ford, the few pages hit both ends of Pleasure-Profit spectrum. Pleasure — good quotations are always enjoyable. Pleasure — they embody masterly usage of rhetorical devices (e.g., antimetabole), shatters dogma with a metaphorical pickaxe or becomes an instant “verbal meme” with certain caustic wit to it. Profit — such insights are integral calculus over rich life experiences. We can instantly learn much, like how even Napoleon believed in power of “spirit over sword”.

The ones I highlighted -

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Elbert Hubbard

What the future holds for us depends on what we hold for the future.
William E. Holler

The man whose authority is recent is always stern.
Aeschylus

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
James Crook

Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal

Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.
Golda Meir

Leadership involves remembering past mistakes, an analysis of today’s achievements, and a well-grounded imagination in visualizing the problems of the future.
Stanley C. Allyn

An executive is one who makes an immediate decision and is sometimes right.
Elbert Hubbard

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgement is the treasurer of a wise man.
William Penn

Big shots are little shots who kept shooting.
Christopher Morley

A leader has two important characteristics; first, he is going somewhere; second, he is able to persuade other people to go with him.
Maximilien Francois Robespierre

Leadership is the ability to get men to do what they don’t want to do and like it.
Harry S. Truman

There are only two powers in the world- the spirit and the sword; and in the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
Honore De Balzac

Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it.
James Truslow Adams

The more weakness, the more falsehood; strength goes straight.
Jean Paul Richter

There are no warlike peoples — just warlike leaders.
Ralph J. Bunche

It takes vision and courage to create — it takes faith and courage to prove.
Owen D. Young

p.s., please pardon the “man” in some quotations reflecting the respective time period.