Top 31 James Kouzes Quotes
#1. The word "story" is short for the word "history." They both have the same root and fundamentally mean the same thing. A story is a narrative on an event or series of events, just like history.
James M. Kouzes
#2. It always takes a group of people working together with a common purpose in an atmosphere of trust and collaboration to get extraordinary things done.
James M. Kouzes
#3. We have to recognize that however smart we are, we're not smarter than everyone else combined ... We can't lose sight of the fact that no matter how important our own contributions are, we couldn't have gotten anywhere without the help and hard work of lots of other people.
James M. Kouzes
#4. What businesses really need is to build connections that last, connections that transcend a single product or marketing campaign, connections that span an extended period.
Kim Garst
#5. I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.
Kurt Vonnegut
#6. Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow.
James M. Kouzes
#7. There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.
James M. Kouzes
#8. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed.
James M. Kouzes
#9. A leader with integrity has one self, at home and at work, with family and with colleagues. He or she has a unifying set of values that guide choices of action regardless of the situation.
James M. Kouzes
#10. Rahel never wrote to him. There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself.
Arundhati Roy
#11. The best way to lead people into the future is to connect with them deeply in the present.
James M. Kouzes
#12. Leadership isn't the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It's a process ordinary people use when they're bringing forth the best from themselves and others. Liberate the leader in everyone, and extraordinary things happen.
James M. Kouzes
#13. You must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as human beings.
James M. Kouzes
#14. If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.
Eric Bentley
#16. As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree.
Sidney Lanier
#17. You can't lead others to places you don't want to go yourself. If you don't feel a burning passion for something, how in the world can you inspire and encourage others to share it?
James M. Kouzes
#18. Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.
James M. Kouzes
#20. Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the mind of the reader.
Harley King
#21. I turned on Fox News and jumped when I saw that they had one of those things in their studio. "Are you people crazy?" I screamed at the television. "Get out of there. Somebody shoot it!" Then I realized I was watching Special Report and had mistaken Charles Krauthammer for a zombie.
Ian McClellan
#22. If you think you're a leader and you turn around and no one is following you, then you're simply out for a walk.
James M. Kouzes
#23. Leaders must know where they are going if they expect others to willingly join them on the journey.
James M. Kouzes
#24. If we're going to be authentic in our leadership, we will have to be willing to serve, and we have to be willing to suffer.
James M. Kouzes
#25. There is no freeway to the future, no paved highway from here to there. There is only wilderness, uncertain terrain. There are no roadmaps, no signposts. So pioneering leaders rely upon a compass and a dream
James M. Kouzes
#27. This is an eternal and fundamental principle, inherent in all things, in every system of philosophy, in every religion, and in every science. There is no getting away from the law of love.
Charles F. Haanel
#28. It is striking how our language reveals the visual nature of our thoughts about the future state of affairs. When we invent the future, we try to get a mental picture of what things will be like long before we have begun the journey. Visions are our windows on the world of tomorrow.
James M. Kouzes
#30. Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#31. The Kouzes-Posner First Law of Leadership: If you don't believe in the messenger, you won't believe the message. Leaders
James M. Kouzes
