Leadership Quotes - page 50
Mr. President, today, we celebrate the birthday of a giant, Ronald Reagan. America is indebted to President Reagan for reviving our national spirit and ensuring that we prevailed in that "long twilight struggle" against soviet totalitarianism. His leadership not only revitalized our economy, but gave us a rebirth of patriotism and national greatness. My fellow Vietnam Prisoners of War share a special affection for Ronald Reagan. Word of his steadfastness against aggression even reached us in our cells thousands of miles away from freedom. When we were released, he befriended and supported us. He understood and appreciated the "noble cause" for which so many brave Americans made the ultimate sacrifice. Today, America enjoys unprecedented peace and prosperity largely due to the policies of Ronald Reagan. So, to celebrate your 90th birthday, we salute you President Reagan, a brave soldier in the battle for freedom.
John McCain
In the time that I have known Shimon Peres, I have been inspired by his statesmanship, leadership, courage and civility. And among his many virtues, I have been most inspired by his idealism. Shimon Peres has always been a dreamer. He once said that "dreaming is only being pragmatic"--words that drew criticism from some and laughter from others. But he is right, of course. It is difficult to understand how someone who has witnessed such unspeakable horrors in his life can still place such faith in dreams. But it is due in part to his optimism and idealism, and his willingness to serve on behalf of those dreams, that Israel exists today. By never giving up on his dreams, Shimon Peres reminds us that we do not need to give in to complacency or cynicism--and why we can't afford to.
John McCain
Mr. President, as we speak--as I am speaking on the floor of the Senate--in an act of stunning partisan politics, President Obama, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, has decided he will veto the National Defense Authorization Act. He is choosing to hold our military hostage for a domestic political agenda, and he is doing so at a time when the crises we face around the world have never been greater, when U.S. leadership has never been weaker, and when our men and women in uniform need vital resources to defend and secure the Nation. As I said, in an act of stunning partisan politics, President Obama, the Commander in Chief, has decided he will veto the national defense authorization bill, and he is right now in the act of doing so--holding our military hostage for his domestic political agenda.
John McCain
I welcome Senator McCain's important statement on President Reagan's legacy and the need to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons. In my speech in Prague, I outlined my agenda for keeping the American people safe from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, and I am grateful to John McCain for his leadership on these critical issues. I have outlined an ambitious strategy for promoting arms control and preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation, which is already bearing fruit. I look forward to working with Senator McCain and the entire Congress to ensure that we accomplish these goals together for the American people and the security of the entire planet.
John McCain
For the last 5 years, we have been writing a shameful chapter in American history. To sum all of this up, leading from behind doesn't work. If America leads from behind, somebody else is going to be in front. If the United States leaves conflicts and creates vacuums, then bad things happen. Look at a map of the Middle East in January of 2009, when this President came to the Presidency of the United States, and look at that map now--the way ISIS has metastasized, the way hundreds of thousands have been murdered and millions are on the march as refugees. We still have apologists for this leading from behind, a policy which is described as "Don't do stupid stuff." This is the result of leadership that has left the scene in a way that we have not seen since the 1930s, in the days of Neville Chamberlain and "peace in our time."
John McCain
In trying to analyse the various elements in the Congress, the dominating position of Gandhiji must always be remembered. He dominates to some extent the Congress, but far more so he dominates the masses. He does not easily fall in any group and is much bigger than the so-called Gandhian group. That is one of the basic factors of the situation. The conscious and thinking Leftists in the country recognise it and, whatever their ideological or temperamental differences with him, have tried to avoid anything approaching a split. Their attempt bas been to leave the Congress under its present leadership, which means under Gandhiji's guidance, and at the same time to push it as far as they could more to the left to radicalise it, and to spread own ideology."
Jawaharlal Nehru
Many a Congressman was a communalist under his national cloak. But the Congress leadership stood firm and, on the whole, refused to side with either communal party, or rather with any communal group. Long ago, right at the commencement of non-co-operation or even earlier, Gandhiji had laid down his formula for solving the communal problem. According to him, it could only be solved by goodwill and the generosity of the majority group, and so he was prepared to agree to everything that the Muslims might demand. He wanted to win them over, not to bargain with them. With foresight and a true sense of values he grasped at the reality that was worthwhile; but others who thought they knew the market price of everything, and were ignorant of the true value of anything, stuck to the methods of the market-place. They saw the cost of purchase with painful clearness, but they had no appreciation of the worth of the article they might have bought.
Jawaharlal Nehru
[T]he Prime Minister has to realise that more than anything else, he will be remembered in history most by how he and his government handled this grave national peril. His leadership will require bringing the country together in a way that has not been his government's strong suit. He needs to strongly lead with a spirit of cooperation with all states (such as a regular conference call with all the chief minsters), reach out to the political opposition and to all communities. History will then remember him as a healer and unifier, which will be critical to pull the country out from a spiraling national crisis.
Narendra Modi
What I want to do is to rebuild the hemp industry in Indian country. And I want us at the table, not on the menu. I want us to be in the leadership of this next economy, because we have a lot of territory upon which you can grow hemp. And we can rebuild the light manufacturing industry in this country.
Winona LaDuke
My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization - or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task.
You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago?
Surely not. More than ever today, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world's peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function more effectively, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.
I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it.
Kofi Annan
How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else,
How to keep smiling when you're thinking of killing yourself,
How to numb a-la-holic to avoid going within,
How to stay stuck in blue by blaming them for everything.I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps,
A course of a lifetime, you'll never forget.
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps,
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best.
Alanis Morissette
So it is with Barack Obama. He has lit a spark of hope amid the fierce urgency of now. I believe that a wave of change is moving across America. If we do not turn aside, if we dare to set our course for the shores of hope, we together will go beyond the divisions of the past and find our place to build the America of the future. My friends, I ask you to join in this historic journey - to have the courage to choose change. It is time again for a new generation of leadership. It is time now for Barack Obama.
Ted Kennedy
I know thousands of people in politics, but I don't know of anybody who takes greater care in the personal side, or the human side, of relationships as Teddy and Vicki do. When I would go through challenging times in my leadership role, they would reach out to me. In fact, the two of them wrote a wonderful poem that I have in my office, with one of Teddy's pictures that they had had matted and framed and presented to me. And at various other times-the loss of my father-Teddy called a couple of times, but it seems that just about any time anybody goes through a difficult time in their life, one of the first calls they're going to get is from Teddy Kennedy. They've become very special in our lives, as they have in the lives of many others, and I consider them very dear friends today.
Ted Kennedy
The other dangers are from Socialism and Fascism. The menace of the latter is not an obvious one, but it is a very real one. You just look at the newspapers which practically created the present Government. You listen to the whispers that are going on-the admiration for Fascism, for its leadership, for its policy, the sort of hint that this is the way, that Signor Mussolini has shown the path for us here, not by concessions, not by giving way to the working classes, but by force-in the words of Signor Mussolini, "The people are tired of liberty." Are they? If they are, then God help them, and their children will live to regret it. There is nothing which is worth selling your freedom for.
David Lloyd George
I felt a special obligation to see that the men who volunteered to face death for their country's honour, should be equipped with the best their country could provide them with in order to fight its battles, and that the most effective use should be made of their valour in the battlefield. The events of the last few months had shaken any confidence I ever had in the wisdom of military leadership and I was full of apprehension lest the flower of Britain's youth should be mown down through professional rigidity, narrowness and lack of vision.
David Lloyd George
Yet more and more of the youth of America are instinctively horrified at the way President Johnson avoided all constitutional procedures and slyly maneuvered us into an Asian war. There was no national debate over a declaration of war. The lies and half-truths that were told, and the phony excuses gradually advanced, made most Americans dubious of the integrity of our leadership.
William O. Douglas
My heart grieves when I think about the situation in the Middle East. I've worked very hard on this for two years, and for years before that. But trust is broken down. We have to do everything we can in our power - all of us, the United States, the European Union, any other nation that has the ability to influence the situation in the Middle East - to work with the Palestinians to put in place a leadership that is responsible, with representative institutions of government that will clamp down on terrorism, that will say to its people, "Terrorism is not getting us anywhere. It is not producing what we want: a Palestinian state. It is keeping us away from a Palestinian state."
And we also have to say to our Israeli friends that you have to do more to deal with the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinian people, and you have to understand that a Palestinian state, when it's created, must be a real state, not a phony state that's diced into a thousand different pieces.
Colin Powell
I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.
George F. Kennan
Only one force can arise today to challenge the continuing decay and increasing barbarism of all regimes based upon exploitation: that of the producing class, the socialist proletariat. Constantly increasing in numbers through the industrialization of the world economy, ever more concentrated in the process of production, trained through misery and oppression to revolt against the ruling classes having had the chance to experience the results of its own "leadership," the working class, despite an increasing number of difficulties and obstacles, has ripened for revolution. The obstacles confronting it are not insurmountable. The whole history of the past century is there to prove that the proletariat represents, for the first time in human history, not only a class in revolt against exploitation but a class positively capable of overthrowing the exploiters and of organizing a free an d humane society. Its victory, and the fate of humanity, are in its hands.
Cornelius Castoriadis
I get down for my grandfather who took my mama
Made her sit in that seat where white folks ain't want us to eat
At the tender age of six, she was arrested for the sit-ins
And with that in my blood, I was born to be different
Now niggas can't make it to ballots to choose leadership
But we can make it to Jacob's or to the dealership
That's why I hear new music and I just don't be feeling it
Racism's still alive, they just be concealin' it.
Kanye West
Unfortunately, the president's first reaction was not, "How can I protect the troops?” It was, "How can I protect myself?” He issued a Twitter denial that he knew about the bounties, then proceeded to launch irrelevant attacks at former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. As is so often the case with President Trump, the welfare of the nation and of our troops did not come up.
This is not what leadership looks like. These are not the actions of someone who serves - or even cares about - the troops to whom he has a duty. These are the actions of a man concerned with self-preservation and little else.
President Trump receives well-deserved criticism for failing to serve his country in Vietnam. Yet, given the lack of loyalty to the troops he has displayed in recent months, that might have been for the best.
Wesley Clark
