Best leadership quotes

we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable—and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.

most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context.

humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly

Similarly, we find it easy to spend $3,000 to upgrade to leather seats when we buy a new $25,000 car, but difficult to spend the same amount on a new leather sofa (even though we know we will spend more time at home on the sofa than in the car).

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions

Talk to someone about themselves and they'll listen for hours.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions

Habit 1: Be Proactive, Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, Habit 3: Put First Things First, Habit 4: Think Win/Win, Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood, Habit 6: Synergize, Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

People tended to select attractively enhanced images of themselves, thinking they were more attractive than they actually were. This is why most of the pictures taken of you seem to look so bad.

When you don’t know the actual facts about yourself, your consciousness pieces together a compelling story, much in the same way it does when you’re trying to read the minds of other people to make sense of why they act as they do.

Knowledge is a curse because once you have it, you can’t imagine what it’s like not to possess it.

A man who claims to be searching for himself is looking for a sense of distinction.

As the number of bystanders increases, the likelihood that any one of them will help you actually decreases. The ideal number might be two: one to help you and the other to call an ambulance.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others

Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you.

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.

The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.

No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.

People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.

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

the true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.

Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.

And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.

People listen better if they feel that you have understood them. They tend to think that those who understand them are intelligent and sympathetic people whose own opinions may be worth listening to. So if you want the other side to appreciate your interests, begin by demonstrating that you appreciate theirs.

The more extreme the opening positions and the smaller the concessions, the more time and effort it will take to discover whether or not agreement is possible.

The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as it may be, is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess.

Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties.

As useful as looking for objective reality can be, it is ultimately the reality as each side sees it that constitutes the problem in a negotiation and opens the way to a solution.

He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.

Conflict brings out truth, creativity, and resolution.

Hope is not a strategy

Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.

Playing dumb is a valid negotiating technique

The Rule of Three is simply getting the other guy to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation. It’s tripling the strength of whatever dynamic you’re trying to drill into at the moment. In doing so, it uncovers problems before they happen. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.