Quotes – L

“We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom”.

—Stephen Vincent Benet

“One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that a greater percentage of politicians and ‘leaders’ are akin to the cock which produces sperm (idea) that cannot fertilise (build) an egg (a nation)”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.” 

—Nelson Mandela 

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

—John F. Kennedy

“You can tell a bully from a leader by how they treat people who disagree with them.” — Miles K. Davis

“When you were made a leader, you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”

—Jack Welch

“True leaders do not make choices with reference to the opinion of the majority. They make choices based on the opinion of the truth and the truth can come from either the majority or the minority!”

― Israelmore Ayivor

“Leadership is not a popularity contest; it’s about leaving your ego at the door. The name of the game is to lead without a title.”

—Robin S. Sharma

“The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee.”

—Robert K. Greenleaf

“A strong secure leader accepts blame and gives credit. A weak insecure leader gives blame and takes credit.” —John Wooden

“Bad leaders care about who is right. Good leaders care about what is right.’”

—Simon Sinek

“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”

—Jim Rohn

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” 

—Bill Gates

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a moulder of consensus.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”

—Theodore M. Hesburgh

“It’s only the visionary and transformational leaders that will gracefully attain the culmination of a distinguished career in politics”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”

—Malala Yousafzai

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

—Edith Wharton

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant”.

—Max DePree

“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better”.

—Bill Bradley

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves”.

—Lao Tzu

“It is implausible to hook a fish without a bait”, and the politicians’ baits are their empty promises.

―B.S.O kpechi

“The single biggest way to impact an organisation is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organisation that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.”

—John Maxwell

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”.

—Warren Bennis

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”

—John Maxwell

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others”.

—Jack Welch

“One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough, or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.” 

—Jacinda Ardern 

“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing”.

—Tom Peters

“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall”.

—Stephen Covey

“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency”.

—Arnold Glasow

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

—John Quincy Adams

“When nations are inveterately ruled by the Methuselahs’, generations are perpetually starved of wisdom of the Solomons'”.

―B.S.O kpechi

“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership”.

—Harvey Firestone

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on”.

—Walter Lippman

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

—Steve Jobs

“True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well”.

—Bill Owens

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent”.

—Abraham Lincoln

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

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special”.

—Bill Taylor

“It’s ironic that in our world today, irrespective of colour, creed or status, those who are envisaged to lead the way are mostly the first to be led astray”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

 “When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.” 

—Eleanor Roosevelt

“A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops”.

—John J Pershing

“A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit”.

—John Maxwell

 “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

“His mind is at once philosophical and practical. He sees all who go there, hears all they have to say, talks freely with everybody, reads whatever is written to him”.

―Mr. Weed (in reference to Abraham Lincoln)

“Inclusive governance is the quotidian means by which nations are built and elevated for the sake of a better generation”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

―Martin Luther King Jr. 

“The wine that is insufficient for the entire clan should not intoxicate one person.”

―African Proverb

“It is high time we accepted the fact that our fathers are the leaders of yesterday so that we may be accorded the privilege of leaders of today thereafter pave the way for our children as the leaders of tomorrow”.

―glonins.com 

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

— Socrates

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking”.

—Steve Jobs

“Every ability of a human being is innate. Its manifestation is forged in the crucible of hard work”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“The meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, which is the Idea (Form) of the Good, from which all good and just things derive utility and value.”

—Plato

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself”.

―Harvey Fierstein

“It’s the joy of living that gives humans the craving for procreation.”

―B.S.O kpechi 

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving”.

—Albert Einstein

“Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.”

—John F. Kennedy 

“Life is worth living when we are able to exercise our ‘freedom’ and find peace doing what nourishes our soul”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“Don’t settle for what life gives you; make life better and build something.”

—Ashton Kutcher

 “Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.”

—Confucius

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us”.

—E. M. Forster

“Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it”.

—Sai Baba

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them”.

—Dalai Lama

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

—Dolly Parton

“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor”.

—Sholom Aleichem

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”.

—Edmund Burke

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware”.

—Henry Miller

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”.

—George Bernard Shaw

“Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.”

—Kobe Bryant

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”.

—Nelson Mandela

“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”

—Leo Burnett

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

—Soren Kierkegaard

“The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed”.

—Eminem

“If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavour”.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough”.

—Oprah Winfrey

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

—Thomas A. Edison

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”.

—John Lennon

“It’s all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family”.

—Philip Green

“Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.”

—Seneca

“Life is not lost by dying”, but, “life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways”

—Stephen Vincent Benet

“To live is the rarest thing in the world; most people just exist.”

—Oscar Wilde

“If you have not yet understood your life’s purpose, probably, it’ll be hard for you to understand why you’re not moving forward in life.”

―B.S.O kpechi 

“Nobody ever sees his own face in the glass. What he observes there is a compound, divided into three parts: one part himself as he really is, one part representing what he expects to see, and a third part, what he wishes to behold.” 

—Richard Burton

“What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?”

—H.G. Wells

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties out of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities out of his difficulties.”

—Robert Mansell

“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like the seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and follow them to reach your destiny.”

—Carl Schurz

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, the continuous thread of revelation.”

—Eudora Welty

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

“Never lose sight of the face that the most important yard stick to your success is how you treat other people.”

—Barbara Bush

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”

—Helen Keller

“I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.”

—Rosa Parks

“Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.”

—Jackie Robinson

“I don’t go by the rule book…I lead from the heart, not the head.”

—Princess Diana

“Life has no formula, what life has is principle”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

About Love

“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have laboured in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it.”

—St. Thomas Aquinas

“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

―Jane Austen

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

—Robert A. Heinlein

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage”.

—Lao Tzu

“If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it”.

―Criss Jami

“A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.”

—Brendan Francis

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction”.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love”.

—Mother Teresa

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend”.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

―Martin Luther King Jr.

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.”

―Anais Nin

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates’ purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”

―Elizabeth Gilbert

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”

―Sarah Dessen

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore, is winged Cupid painted blind.”

―William Shakespeare

“Love is like the wind; you can’t see it but you can feel it.”

―Nicholas Sparks

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

―Jane Austen

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

―Andre Gide

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

―William Shakespeare

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

―Elie Wiesel

“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit”.

—Khalil Gibran

“True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen”.

—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you”.

— Erich Fromm

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity”.

—Henry Van Dyke

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

—Oscar Wilde

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

—Dr. Seuss

“If I had a flower for every time, I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.”

—Alfred Tennyson

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”.

—Aristotle

“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone”.

—Orson Welles

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

―Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit”.

—Khalil Gibran

“Better to put your heart on the line, risk everything, and walk away with nothing than play it safe. Love is a lot of things, but “safe” isn’t one of them.”

―Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

“The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.”

―Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight

“True love cannot be found where it does not exist, nor can it be denied where it does”.

—Torquato Tasso

“Love is not something you protect. It’s something you risk.”

― Gayle Forman, Just One Year

“It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun”.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

―Anais Nin

“The way to love anything is to realise that it may be lost”.

—Gilbert K. Chesterton

“The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”

―Brené Brown

“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it”.

—Mark Twain

“I do not want your blind and rigid loyalty towards my ideas, I want you to explore, I want you to expand, I want you to expand to such an extent that even my ideas become obsolete.”

―Abhijit Naskar

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

―Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”

―Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

“All of us want to live, and that is absolutely natural. However, we should learn from childhood to choose our best way to die. If we don’t do that, we end up spending our days like a dog, only in search of harbour, food and expressing a blind loyalty to his owner in return. That isn’t enough to make our lives have a meaning”.

―Yamamoto Tsunetomo

“Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong”.

―Ron Pau

“We must terminate our loyalty to ineffectiveness, pursue a goal that satisfies the future yearning and not the one that pacifies the current hunger”.

―B.S.O kpechi 

“I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”.  

―Martin Luther King Jr. (Letter from Birmingham Jail.)

“The concept of loyalty is distorted when it is understood to mean blind acceptance. It is correctly interpreted when it is assumed to cover honest criticism”.

―Dag Hammarskjold

“When loyalty is misguided, those who are seemingly loyal to some extent become cage-bound.”  

―B.S.O kpechi 

“One can’t allow blind loyalty to a friendship to lead one away from acting in the public interest. If Martin [Schulz] were to propose something that was totally absurd, our friendship would not prevent me from doing the opposite”.

― Jean-Claude Juncker

“Loyalty to an unjust cause is a perversion of honour”.

—Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

“I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me- they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could”.

—Veronica Roth

“This is the greatest country under the sun. But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty, cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice”.

Madam C. J. Walker

“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul”.

—Mark Twain

“Love often wears a mask in order to test loyalty”.

—Minna Antrim

“A man is not an orange. You can’t eat the fruit and throw the peel away.”

– Arthur Miller

“Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness”.

—Edwin Louis Cole

“The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings”.

—Albert Schweitzer

“Loyalty is dead, the experts proclaim, and the statistics seem to bear them out. On average, U.S. corporations now lose half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one. We seem to face a future in which the only business relationships will be opportunistic transactions between virtual strangers”.

—Frederick R. Reichheld

“If you will not die for us, you cannot ask us to die for you”.

—Jacqueline Carey

“If you can’t value a commitment made by someone else, your own commitments lose their value too”.

—Ram Mohan

“Loyalty cannot be blueprinted. It cannot be produced on an assembly line. In fact, it cannot be manufactured at all, for its origin is the human heart — the centre of self-respect and human dignity. It is a force which leaps into being only when conditions are exactly right for it — and it is a force very sensitive to betrayal”. 

—Maurice Franks

“Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue – perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one”.

—Milan Kundera

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses”.

— Ann Landers

“My dear boy, the people who only love once in their lives are really shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failures”.

—Oscar Wilde

“Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved”.

—Martin Luther

“All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.”

—John Barth

“The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other”.

—Mario Puzo

“Better to have one woman on your side than ten men”.

—Robert Jordan

“A man’s country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle and patriotism are loyalty to that principle”.

—George William Curtis

“It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.”

―Emilie Autumn

“I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray.”

―Albert Camus

“Active loyalists do not merely support the president but publicly defend even his most controversial moves. Passive loyalists retreat from public view when scandals erupt but still vote with the president. Critical loyalists try, in a sense, to have it both ways. They may publicly distance themselves from the president’s worst behaviour, but they do not take any action (for example, voting in Congress) that will weaken, much less bring down, the president. In the face of presidential abuse, any of these responses will enable authoritarianism.”

―Steven Levitsky