Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: Leadership, governance, politics

---

Leadership is action, not position.
— Donald H. McGannon, businessman

Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882)

[Because power corrupts] Society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
— John Adams, American Founding Father and second U.S. president (1735-1826)

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
— Unknown

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.
— Walter Lippmann, American journalist, author and public philosopher (1889-1974)

If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes.
— Sir Thomas More in the movie A Man For All Seasons (1966, screenplay by Robert Bolt)

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
— George Washington, American Founding Father and war hero, first U.S. president (1732-1799)

The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.
— John Adams, American Founding Father and second U.S. president (1735-1826)

Character is the only secure foundation of the state.
— Calvin Coolidge, 30th American president (1872-1933)

A man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.
— Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine dramatist, political analyst and adviser (1469-1527)

With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.
— Richard Nixon, 37th U.S. president (1913-1994), from TV ad for Barry Goldwaters presidential campaign in 1964

All leaders must face some crisis where their own strength of character is the enemy.
— Richard Reeves, 20th-century American journalist and essayist

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character – the courage and heart – to see it through.
— Peggy Noonan, 20th century American author, speech writer for U.S. President Ronald Reagan

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.
— Charles DeGaulle, French general and president, founder of the Fifth Republic (1890-1970)

Politics ruins the character.
— Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor, founder of the German nation state (1815-1898)

Character is power.
— Booker T. Washington, American educator (1856-1915)

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a mans character, give him power.
— Abraham Lincoln, 16th American president (1809-1865)

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
— Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, inventor and statesman (1706-1790)

Every person in America has done or said something that would keep him or her from being president. Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about character issues.
— P.J. ORouke, 20th-century American humorist and essayist

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen.
— Dr. Robert Jarvik, 20th-century American heart surgeon

Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right.
— Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father and U.S. president (1743-1826), letter to James Monroe, 1806

I don't like people who are in politics for themselves and not for others. You want that, you can go into show business.''
— Elvis Presley, American rock 'n' roll icon (1935-1977)

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
— William Hazlitt, English essayist and literary critic (1778-1830)

You can only govern men by serving them.
— Victor Cousin, French philosopher (1792-1867)

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.
— Melvin R. Laird, 20th-century American secretary of defense

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
— Henry Adams, American historian, memoirist and diplomat (1838-1918)

An election is a moral horror, as bad as battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned.
— George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish dramatist and wit (1856-1950)

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.''
— Ambrose Bierce, American journalist and writer (1842-1914?), from the Devil's Dictionary

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.
— Charles de Gaulle, French general and president, founder of the Fifth Republic (1890-1970)

Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.
— John Kenneth Galbraith, North American economist, novelist and diplomat (b. 1908)

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
— Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, French jurist and political philosopher (1689-1755)

Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good administration can never save bad policy.
— Adlai Stevenson, American politician and presidential candidate (1900-1965)

How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?
— Harry S. Truman, 33rd American president (1884-1972)

Politics is the art of controlling the environment.
— Hunter S. Thomson, 20th-century American journalist and satirist

Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, public philosopher and poet (1803-1882)

« back to quotations | top of page