James MacGregor Burns Quotes

12 quotes in 242 categories

• In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.
• To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable processes…
• 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 be…
• Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.
• A revolution is an act of violence whereby one class shatters the authority of another.
• Leaders are not pale reflectors of major social conflicts; they play up some, play down others, ignore still others.
• 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 ennobling…
• Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.
• Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels…
• The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.
• Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality,
• Let us face reality. The framers (of the Constitution) have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that…

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