Leader Quotes by James MacGregor Burns

Let us face reality. The framers (of the Constitution) have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions…

— James MacGregor Burns

“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may…

— James MacGregor Burns

Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can…

— James MacGregor Burns

"Teachers"... treat students neither coercively nor instrumentally but as joint seekers of truth and of mutual actualization. They help students define moral values not…

— James MacGregor Burns

In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like…

— James MacGregor Burns

The practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power.

— James MacGregor Burns

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

— James MacGregor Burns

To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable…

— James MacGregor Burns

“above all, Locke’s transforming idea that government was established and maintained by the consent of the governed, in which all men had an equal…

— James MacGregor Burns

Leaders are not pale reflectors of major social conflicts; they play up some, play down others, ignore still others.

— James MacGregor Burns

Those who remember only that the Roosevelts served hot dogs to the royals will be fascinated by this well-researched account of an historic and…

— James MacGregor Burns

“Politics seemed to have fallen to a new wartime low of spite and pettiness.”

— James MacGregor Burns