Lessons in Leadership Quotes

“If we want God to listen to us, we have to be prepared to listen to Him. And if we learn to listen to Him, then we eventually learn to listen to our fellow humans: the silent cry of the lonely, the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the people in existential pain.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“It is easy to be a critic, but the only effective critics are those who truly love – and show they love – those whom they criticise.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Always choose influence rather than power. It helps change people into people who can change the world.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“A leader should never try to be all things to all people. A leader should be content to be what he or she is. Leaders must have the strength to know what they cannot be if they are to have the courage to be themselves.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Leadership demands two kinds of courage: the strength to take a risk, and the humility to admit when a risk fails.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Parents and leaders must establish a culture in which honest, open, respectful communication takes place, one that involves not just speaking but also listening. Without it, tragedy is waiting in the wings.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“We continue to face this struggle of governance and organisation today.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Defeats, delays, and disappointments hurt. They hurt even for Moses. So if there are times when we too feel discouraged and demoralised, it is important to remember that even the greatest people failed. What made them great is that they kept going. The road to success passes through many valleys of failure. There is no other way.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“This is one of only two instances in the whole Torah in which the words lo tov, “not good,” appear. The other is in Genesis (2:18), where God says, “It is not good [lo tov] for man to be alone.” We cannot lead alone. We cannot live alone. To be alone is not good.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“In this case the Torah is emphasising that Exodus ends as Genesis began, with a work of creation. Note the difference as well as the similarity. Genesis began with an act of divine creation. Exodus ends with an act of human creation.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“leadership as the building of the adaptive capacity of a people.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“The laws God gave me and I gave you exist not for God’s sake but for ours. God gave us freedom – the most rare, precious, unfathomable thing of all other than life itself. But with freedom comes responsibility. That means that we must take the risk of action. God gave us the land but we must conquer it. God gave us the fields but we must plough, sow, and reap them. God gave us bodies but we must tend and heal them. God is our father; He made us and established us. But parents cannot live their children’s lives. They can only show them by instruction and love how to live.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“To be a leader, you do not need a crown or robes of office. All you need to do is to write your chapter in the story, do deeds that heal some of the pain of this world, and act so that others become a little better for having known you. Live so that, through you, our ancient covenant with God is renewed in the only way that matters: in life. Moses’ last testament to us at the very end of his days, when his mind might so easily have turned to death, was: choose life.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity you shall prosper” (Jer. 29:7) – the first statement in history of what it is to be a creative minority.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Power works by division, influence by multiplication. Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have. Influence is a non-zero-sum game: the more you share, the more you have.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Uncritical followership and habits of silent obedience give rise to the corruptions of power, or sometimes simply to avoidable catastrophes. For”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“What all four stories tell us is that there comes a time for each of us when we must make an ultimate decision as to who we are. It is a moment of existential truth. Lot is a Hebrew, not a citizen of Sodom. Eliezer is Abraham’s servant, not his heir. Joseph is Jacob’s son, not an Egyptian of loose morals. Moses is a prophet, not a priest. To say yes to who we are, we have to have the courage to say no to who we are not. Pain”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Applying inflexible rules to a constantly shifting political landscape destroys societies. Communism was like that. In free societies, people change, culture changes, the world beyond a nation’s borders does not stand still. So a politician will find that what worked a decade or a century ago does not work now. In politics it is easy to get it wrong, hard to get it right.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“all the bad things that had happened to him were necessary if the intended outcome was to occur.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

“Winston Churchill’s great remark that “success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
― Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible