Quotes About Moral Leadership

#1. I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership in the world, to explore, to seek knowledge.

Eugene Cernan

#2. In fact, the converse is true: At a time when the United States has been called on for a level of moral leadership, vision and inspiration not seen since World War II, we cannot afford to dissemble about crimes against humanity.

Adam Schiff

#3. Yes, America must do the right thing, but to provide moral leadership, America must do it in the right way, too.

David Cameron

#4. We need moral leadership and courage in our world.

Jacqueline Novogratz

#5. The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.

William O. Douglas

#6. The presidency is not merely an administrative office ... It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#7. We were hoping Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America. That failed.

Lech Walesa

#8. Truly, the world is in need of moral leadership ... that teaches the difference between right and wrong and teaches us to forgive one another even as we are forgiven by our Father in heaven.

Billy Graham

#9. What are most people hungry for? I believe it is spiritual and moral leadership. Increases in technology, scientific inventions, and medical miracles have been marvelous and incredible. But we must use them properly to bring us joy, and that requires spiritual and moral leadership.

James E. Faust

#10. Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.

Shirley Hazzard

#11. If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership.

Will Rogers

#12. The American color bar unless speedily removed will be the rock on which our international Good Neighbor policy and our pious claims to moral leadership will founder.

Charles Hamilton Houston

#13. Let us build a 21st-century rural economy of cutting-edge companies and technologies that lead us to energy and food security. Such an investment will revitalize rural America, re-establish our moral leadership on climate security and eliminate our addiction to foreign oil.

Tom Vilsack

#14. His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.

Barack Obama

#15. Since when do grown men and women, who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership," require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage?

Meg Greenfield

#16. Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

#17. The man who goes to the top is the man who has something to say and says it when circumstances warrant. Men who keep silent underdressed are moral cowards.

Richard Llewellyn

#18. The sword of the Spirit has been muffled up and decked out with flowers and ribbons, author writes, conveying the sentiments of a Congregationist minister on men's ceding of moral and religious instruction and correction as women's work.

Nancy Pearcey

#19. In my view, leadership is the courage to take risks in defense of a position that is both legal and moral. The politician who tries to become a wise guy by becoming friends to everybody - corrupt or not - is not a leader.

Miriam Defensor Santiago

#20. Unless they're utterly heartless, people put a certain value on human life. It keeps us from killing each other off for no reason. But for leaders like you and me, a moral high ground is too absolute. There are choices to be made.

Amanda Bouchet

#21. Leadership is never an avenue to be self-serving but,a platform to render great service to people.

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

#22. Under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States has given up the moral high ground that we used to occupy as an international leader.

Marty Meehan

#23. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#24. The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#25. Leaders are usually a reflection of the people they lead. How can a leader be moral if his people are immoral?

Awdhesh Singh

#26. [The church's] job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.

James A. Michener

#27. Every generation has been given the same blueprint to follow for the good of society. When that blueprint is disregarded by parents and those in leadership positions, the chain is broken and the human race suffers.

Ellen J. Barrier

#28. The difficulty was not that of following a moral principle at personal cost; the difficulty was that of knowing what to do when there is more than one principal, and when the principles clash.

Elton Trueblood

#29. Take a guy who can walk on water, who can raise people from the dead, who can look at you and tell you what you had for breakfast ... if a guy like that can't find twelve trustworthy mates, who can? Stop at eleven and call it done, that's the moral of that story.

Liam Perrin

#30. As noble as our intentions might be as we assume a leadership role, we are always one errant, unthinking action or careless word away from getting outside the boundaries of good judgment or even the moral absolutes that must frame all decisions.

Tim Irwin

#31. The self respect of individuals ought to make them demand of their leaders conformity with an agreed-upon code of ethics and moral conduct.

Mary Barnett Gilson

#32. Prime ministers require the hide of a rhinoceros, the morals of St. Francis, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the leadership of Napoleon, the magnetism of a Beatle and the subtlety of Machiavelli.

Lester B. Pearson

#33. Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

Lewis H. Lapham

#34. The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

Lord Chesterfield

#35. Overall, the challenge of leadership is both moral and one of developing the characteristics that make us respected by one another.

Louis Farrakhan

#36. The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority.

W. Edwards Deming

#37. For Aboriginal leaders, the social and moral obligation that comes with community leadership is life-long. Those who lead, who have authority, must care for and look after those who come behind.

Patrick Dodson

#38. Leadership responsibility is multidimensional and cannot be described in one or two words. It is personal, interpersonal, environmental and societal.

Linda Fisher Thornton

#39. There is the authority of position and the authority of knowledge - 'Authority flows from the one who knows.' But sharing in hardship confers upon a leader something quite rare - moral authority.

John Adair

#40. For thousands of years art was seen as a source of responsible moral and ethical leadership. Today, taking that stance is almost seen as comic.

Jack Beal

#41. The moral was, in time of anarchy, tough leadership is the only solution - even though the collateral damage may be heartbreaking. Mrs. Thatcher's strident, take-no prisoners approach was in some ways repugnant, but it was surely necessary.

Nigel Hamilton

#42. Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.

Jesse Jackson

#43. True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect.

Stephen Covey

#44. I don't believe our country will last the way we know it much longer unless there's a change. And we just continue this moral decline going down, and the only hope, I believe, is God. We just hope and pray that maybe he'll hear our prayers and give us some godly leadership.

Franklin Graham

#45. Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

Carl Sagan

#46. Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully.

John A. Lejeune

#47. If an artist is driven primarily by social responsibility, I think the art probably suffers because, again, just as leadership has a rather defined end point or purpose, social responsibility would seem to have a very clear moral context.

Billy Collins

#48. Having a succession and legacy plan in place will make you ready for forced changes due to circumstances beyond your control, like death, any form of incapacity, sudden changes in laws and regulations and even corporate scandals and moral failure.

Archibald Marwizi

#49. In the worst of times the best among us never lose their moral compass, and that is how they emerge relatively unscathed.

Henry Rollins

#50. Leader of Character: someone who uses influence to achieve a moral or ethical goal.

Dave Anderson

#51. Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.

Abraham Lincoln

#52. People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

Bill Hybels

#53. In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.

Wangari Maathai

#54. The author points out that the moral failure of Abigail Adams' brother focused her on disciplining her children, and herself, so that they did not come to the same end.

Paul C. Nagel

#55. Leadership on virtue can never come from the major political actors; it will have to come from a movement of people, such as the people of a town who come together and agree to create moral coherence across the many areas of children's lives.

Jonathan Haidt

#56. Leadership is an unlimited resource and as such, is a lifelong pursuit of learning. That learning must be to transform 'leader of position' to 'leadership with moral purpose'.

Hilarie Owen

#57. Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.

Stephen Covey