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…

— 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.…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— James MacGregor Burns

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

— James MacGregor Burns

“licentiousness has seldom produced the loss of liberty; but that the tyranny of rulers has almost always effected it.”

— James MacGregor Burns

“as a luxury liner, it had been converted to wartime use; with blacked-out portholes and gray camouflage paint, it had”

— 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…

— James MacGregor Burns

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

— James MacGregor Burns

Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality,

— James MacGregor Burns

Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.

— James MacGregor Burns

Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another…

— James MacGregor Burns

“The nation, the Supreme Court has said, has “no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely…

— James MacGregor Burns

“mobilization of manpower, he promptly asked Congress for the measure not only on the ground of mobilization but also to assure the…

— James MacGregor Burns

“Europeans had no prospects other than the “life after life” in heaven promised to true believers.”

— James MacGregor Burns

The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.

— James MacGregor Burns

A revolution is an act of violence whereby one class shatters the authority of another.

— James MacGregor Burns