Although leadership and the exercise of power are distinguishable activities, they overlap and interweave in important ways. Consi...der a corporate chief executive officer who has the gift for inspiring and motivating people, who has vision, who lifts the spirits of employees with a resulting rise in productivity and quality of product, and a drop in turnover and absenteeism. That is leadership. But evidence emerges that the company is falling behind in the technology race. One day with the stroke of a pen the CEO increases the funds available to the research division. That is the exercise of power. The stroke of a pen could have been made by an executive with none of the qualities one associates with leadership.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the bos...s's moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Rutherford B. Hayes] was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious ...civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or el...ection campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Police officer: Say chief. This fellow Comante.... Public's interested in him. He's a colorful character. Chief Detective: Co...lorful. What color is a trawling louse? Say listen, that's the attitude of too many morons in this country. They think these big hoodlums are some sort of demagogues. Whad a they do about a guy like Comante, they sentimentalize him. Romance. Make jokes about 'em. They had some excuse for glorifying our old Western badmen. They met in the middle of the street at high noon waiting for each other to draw. But these fiends sneak up, shoot a guy in the back, and then run away. Colorful ... When I think what goes on in the minds of these lice, I wanna vomit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was something so free and self-contained about him, something in the young fellow's movements, that made that officer aware ...of him. And this irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life by his servant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had bee...n forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, "Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can" --and walked out of the room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise. Without having any chief or officer or ruler, it prepares its food i...n summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make th...is molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one an...other are intricate and periodic; in fact, "galaxy" is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »