First and foremost, effective leaders must continuously strive to make themselves smarter and better at making judgments.

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Leaders learn by leading, and they learn bestby leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.

You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.

Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.

Leaders must earn the trust of their teams, their organizations, and their stakeholders before attempting to engage their support.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied

Now is the time to make sure we have the strings of all the balloons we want to keep before they all float away.

Loneliness is a hell of a drug.

If you make every game a life-and-death thing, you’re going to have problems. You’ll be dead a lot.

Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening. Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing. Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter.

Because each book has its own special perfume.

To read without joy is stupid.

Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.

I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!

They know who keep a broken tryst, Till something from the Spring be missed We have not truly known the Spring.