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literature > books > quotations > military > leadership
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Quotations
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more quotations about leadership (mostly Montgomery) >> "Only a man who does nothing makes no mistakes." General Bily "There are no bad regiments, there are only bad officers." Field Marshall Lord Slim "Congress can make a General, but only communications can make him a commander." Old American
Army dictum.
"A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander." General Omar Bradley "In the World War, nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes … talking, talking, talking in place of leading, leading, leading." Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure, 1936 Major-General J.F.C. Fuller "My Lord, if I attempted to answer the mass of futile correspondence which surrounds me, I should be debarred from the serious business of campaigning. So long as I retain an independent position, I shall see no officer under my command is debarred by attending to the futile drivelling of mere quill-driving from attending to his first duty, which is and always has been to train the private men under his command that they may without question beat any force opposed to them in the field." (To the Secretary of State for War during the Peninsular Campaign) Wellington Harry S. Truman
"Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Lets go inland and be killed." (on Omaha Beach, 1944) General Norman Cota "I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely his lips, follow me." Soldier, patriot and uniter of modern Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi "I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat’." Winston Churchill "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace." Napoleon I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me. Dispatch, Aug. 1810, speaking of his generals The Duke of Wellington Leadership is about motivating human resources. Management is utilising resources to their most efficient, desired output. But the human labour stock needs to be motivated, convinced of its work, and this is what leadership is about. One can be a very good manager with very little leadership ability. A leader can have excitement, vision and emotion, but lack the management abilities to carry out his vision. Leadership is motivation to create business, management the skill to retain it. You manage things, you lead people. PRJ "He was endowed with a very
strong personality which could inspire others. He knew how to
handle other individualists, and knew what to concentrate on
and what to ignore. He was extremely brave because he was often
afraid. When asked how it felt to jump out of an aircraft from
which the last two parachutists had been killed [his training
programme] he said: "Well, I had to; it was a moral obligation.
But I was horribly scared." "Needless to say, [he] was greatly admired by his men, and he, in his turn, spared no effort in looking after them. However he was never familiar. It might be thought that an officer living in such close contact with his men would soon become on familiar terms with them. This easily happens and often enough the officer's authority seems to become shared out among the men, leaving him with the ultimate responsibility for decisions he may not have been alone in making. It did not happen to [him]. Authority never slipped from his grasp, not merely because he was an officer but because he was clearly the best, and the leader ." [of Maj. Anders Lassen in The SAS] "He [Lt Col 'Paddy' R.B. Mayne] was highly intelligent and a good organiser. He was also compassionate. These qualities alone would not, of course, have made him the great fighter and leader that he was. Mayne probably owed much of his success to methodical, careful planning. If he had to venture into the unknown he would go without hesitation, but if there was any possibility of preliminary reconnaissance he would carry this out meticulously ." "Where that power [over men] lay is hard to define. I was carried away by his enthusiasm, by his energy, by his oratory, by his sheer determination, courage and endurance .. he knew what fear was. He could recognise the symptoms and he did not like them. But he could control that fear, which was very real in him, and that is the measure of true courage and supreme self-confidence ." [of David Stirling in The SAS] Philip Warner
"Thoughtful naval officers concede that staff work has never been one of their service's greatest strengths. The autocratic command structure that is necessary in a warship at sea mitigates against the military approach, which is for a commander to offer his staff great flexibility in presenting a range of alternatives for achieving an objective. A naval staff is more accustomed to being arbitrarily informed by its commander, 'This is what I want to do. Arrange to do it.'" Max Hastings,
Simon Jenkins
" The ingredients which bring about this agreeable state of affairs are many and varied. At the most superficial level they are believed to include such factors as voice, stature and appearance, an impression of omniscience, trustworthiness, sincerity and bravery. At a deeper and rather more important level, leadership depends on a proper understanding of the needs and opinions of those one hopes to lead, and the context in which the leadership occurs. It also depends on good timing. Hitler, who was neither omniscient, trustworthy nor sincere, whose stature was unremarkable and whose appearance verged on the repellent, understood these rules and exploited them to full advantage. The same may be said of many good comedians." On the Psychology of Military Incompetence Norman Dixon "A piece of spaghetti, like a military unit, must be lead from the front." General George S. Patton "We few, we happy few, we
band of brothers; William Shakespeare "I once knew a fellow whose father was a Company Sergeant-major. His father said, 'The men underneath me are more frightened of me than anything else, and that's a good idea because if I told them to do something they'll do it. Rather than be frightened of what they were going to do, they're frightened of me.' With hindsight, I could see the logic of it." in The Navy: 1939 to the present day, Max Arthur Able Seaman Bob Tilburn, RN "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 19:18 |
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