Leadership Quotes · Page 3

Lead with vision and integrity using timeless leadership quotes from history's greatest commanders, CEOs, and change-makers. Wisdom for anyone who dares to lead.

162 quotes · Page 3 of 7

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?”

— Henry David Thoreau

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

— Nelson Mandela

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“To be good and lead a good life means to give to others more than one takes from them.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

“He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has neither to command nor to obey.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.”

— Charles Dickens

“The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government.”

— Charles Dickens

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”

— Abraham Lincoln

“Our popular Government has often been called an experiment.”

— Abraham Lincoln

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