Favorite Quotes

In an effort to share insight and ideas I’ve encountered in my experiences as a student and teacher I have collected the quotes below. Some of the quotes are from famous folks and others from less known individuals. There might even be one or two of my own thoughts added to the mix. Perhaps you will find the passages below as inspirational or at least as informational as have I. Please feel free to send any quotes about which you feel especially fond to doctorious [at] generative [dot] com or you can simply add them in the comment box below.

William Blake
- “I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans. I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create.”

Edmund Burke (and Bruce Wayne)
- “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Jim Collins
- “You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.”

Max DePree
- “The true leader is a listener.”
- “A leader is a person who has followers. Leaders are those from whom we learn.”
- “Even if they don’t have all the answers, really good leaders do have stories.”
- “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.”

Lou Holz
- “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”

Søren Kierkegaard
- “To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.”

John P. Kotter
- “Strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse.”

John C. Maxwell
- “Leadership is influence.”
- “Leaders are learners.”
- “Only empowered people can reach their potential…the greatest things happen…when you give others the credit.”
- “When a leader can’t or won’t empower others, he creates barriers within the organization that people cannot overcome.”
- “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from their followers.”

John Milton (Paradise Lost)
- “The mind is its own place, and in it self. Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

Donald T. Phillips
- “The only real power a leader may possess is the power to persuade.”
- “Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”
- “Hope is a sustaining element…Hope motivates and inspires. It causes people to take action.”
- “People will respect and follow leaders who do what they advise others to do, who display courage in the face of adversity, who act and behave as they are expected to.”
- “[Martin Luther King, Jr.] was able to achieve something great…because he portrayed the cause as bigger than any one person.”

Arthur Schopenhauer
- “Man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy.”

Mark Van Doren
- “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

Lao Tzu (translated by John Heider)
- “Your behavior influences others through a ripple effect. A ripple effect works because everyone influences everyone else.”
- “Because the wise leader has no expectations, no outcome can be called a failure.”
- “Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow. Whatever is rigid and blocked will atrophy and die.”
- “If you want to be free, learn to live simply. Use what you have and be content where you are.”
- “Enlightened leadership is service, not selfishness.”