Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

~C.S. Lewis

Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization. Leadership creates an environment that makes people want to, rather than have to, do.

~ Horst Schulze~ President of Ritz-Carlton Hotels

I don't care how long you've been around, you'll never see it all.  

~Bob Lemon, 1977 , All Star MLB pitcher

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

~Thomas Jefferson

“There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles.”

~Stephen Covey

“Any time you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem”

~Stephen Covey

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”

~Jim Rohn

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked His response was a question: “Where do you want to go? “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter”

~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.

~Rick Pitino, Basketball Coach

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

~Chopin

All hype and no substance makes fluff.

~George N. Parks

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

~Leonard Bernstein

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.  

~Confucius

In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of another. In ethics, he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

~Immanuel Kant

Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action. Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.

~ Johann Goethe

The history of free man is never written by chance, but by choice – their choice.

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.

~The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

~Victor Hugo

Simply put – at its most elemental and practical level – leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

~Stephen Covey

All great achievements require time.

~William J. H. Boetcker

It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.

~Ben Carson

Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution, long after the emotion with which it was made has passed.

~Brian Tracy

Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us everyday.

~Sally Koch

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.

~ Liz Armbruster

As you climb the ladder of success, check occasionally to make sure it is leaning against the right wall.

~ Anonymous

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

~William Arthur Ward

We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them.

~ William Arthur Ward

Nevertheless, the only way we can move from where we are now to where we would like to be is to accept where we are now.

~ Stephen Covey

What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.

~Poet , quoted by Victor Frankl

Patience is emotional diligence.

~Stephen Covey

Your goals are constantly revised according to circumstances. But your purpose, your real reason for being, that supersedes.

~Jim Tressel

An "empowered" organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.

~Anonymous

Remember that our reactions are a product of our perceptions, and our perceptions are a result of what is at the center of our life.

~Stephen Covey

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. ~Jack Welch

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

~Warren Bennis

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

~Theodore Roosevelt

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.

~General Colin Powell

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

~Colin Powell

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

~Eric Hoffer

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

~Peter Drucker

It’s better to be humbled by the word than by the force of circumstances.

~Stephen Covey

Quotes

If you’re bored with life — or you don’t get up every morning
with a burning desire to do things — you don’t have enough
goals.”  

~Lou Holtz

“Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he
is reaching out and striving for his goals.” 

~Aristotle

Left untended, knowledge and skill, like all assets, depreciate in value – surprisingly quickly.
~David Maister

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

~Muhammad Ali

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.
~Stephen Covey

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
~Andrew Carnegie

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

~Theodore Roosevelt

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
~Aristotle

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.   – Mark Twain

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.  

~William F. Buckley, Jr.

Play always as if a master were listening.

~Robert Schumann

As long as you live, learn how to live.

~Seneca

Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.

~Peter Drucker

The best way to inspire people to a superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.

~Harold S. Geneen, Former Chairman of ITT

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

~Albert Schweitzer

Where there’s no gardener, there’s no garden.

~Stephen Covey “First Things First”

It's always too early to quit.

~ Norman Vincent Peale

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

~William J. H. Boetcker

We all make mistakes.  If you can’t make mistakes, you can’t make decisions.  I’ve made a lot bigger mistakes myself.

~Warren Buffett

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing.

~Steve Jobs

(Regarding criticism and critique)

Welcome it as part of a process… you just can’t avoid it… if you go to bat enough times, you are going to strike out; and you will do it cataclysmically; and you know success and failure are just millimeters apart.

~Peter Guber, producer

(Regarding conflict and excuse making)

Do you have a brain? Then you can think your way out of it.  The reason we have brains is so we can figure out how to do things.

~Ben Carson and Sonya Carson

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

~ Albert Einstein

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up

~ Babe Ruth

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.

~Michael Althsuler

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.

~Anonymous

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. ~Jack Welch

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or maps, define the territory.

~Stephen Covey

We must seek to understand the intent of communication without prejudging or rejecting the content… Communication, after all, is not so much a matter of intellect as it is of trust and acceptance of others, of their ideas and feelings, acceptance of the fact that they’re different, and that from their point of view, they are right.

~Stephen Covey

You never know who’s going to be in the audience.  You never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the first time, and you never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the last time.

~Robert Shaw

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

~Max DePree

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

~John Maxwell

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. ~Aristotle

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. ~Kenneth Blanchard

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.

~Jim Rohn

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

~Norman Schwarzkopf

Leaders live by choice, not by accident.

~ Mark Gorman

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

~ Winston Churchill

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

~Kenneth Blanchard

An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.

~ Scott Belsky

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.

~Marcus Aurelius

You see ‘awesome’ and I see ‘lost.’ It’s very easy to lose touch with reality when you’ve got that many people thinking you are more than you really are.

~Brian Bosworth