Leadership Quotes

“The power holder may be the person whose “private motives are displaced onto public objects and rationalized in terms of public interest,”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“that the effectiveness of leaders must be judged not by their press clippings but by actual social change measured by intent and by the satisfaction of human needs and expectations;”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“Power wielders may treat people as things. Leaders may not.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“In brief, leaders with motive and power bases tap followers’ motives in order to realize the purposes of both leaders and followers.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“It lies not only in recognizing that not all human influences are necessarily coercive and exploitative, that not all transactions among persons are mechanical, impersonal, ephemeral. It lies in seeing that the most powerful influences consist of deeply human relationships in which two or more persons engage with one another.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“Moral leadership emerges from, and always returns to, the fundamental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of the followers.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“A leader and a tyrant are polar opposites.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“In the final quarter of our century that life-and-death engagement with leadership has given way to the cult of personality, to a “gee whiz” approach to celebrities.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“They find “sources of strength in the self to develop the self.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“that power is first of all a relationship and not merely an entity to be passed around like a baton or hand grenade; that it involves the intention or purpose of both power holder and power recipient; and hence that it is collective, not merely the behavior of one person.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“Power has been defined as the production of intended effects, but the crux of the matter lies in the dimensions of “intent.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“Essential in a concept of power is the role of purpose.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“It lies in seeing that the most powerful influences consist of deeply human relationships in which two or more persons engage with one another.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“It lies not only in recognizing that not all human influences are necessarily coercive and exploitative, that not all transactions among persons are mechanical, impersonal, ephemeral.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“apotheosizing”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

“equal, hierarchical, or unrelated? These relationships also define the exercise of power as a collective act. A psychological”
― James MacGregor Burns, Leadership