Leaders Serve Quotes

“Only by remembering to say 'no' will the women of 21st century regain their voice and remember their power. 'No' is the most important word in a woman's dialectic arsenal, and it is the one word that our employers, our leaders, and quite often, the men in our lives would do anything to prevent us from saying. No, we will not serve. No, we will not settle for the dirty work, the low-paid work, the unpaid work. No, we will not stay late at the office, look after the kids, sort out the shopping. We refuse to fit the enormity of our passion, our creativity, and our potential into the rigid physical prison laid down for us since we were small children. No. We refuse. We will not buy your clothes and shoes and surgical solutions. No, we will not be beautiful; we will not be good. Most of all, we refuse to be beautiful and good.”

— Laurie Penny

“Let us hope that Lysenko's success in Russia will serve for many generations to come as another reminder to the world of how quickly and easily a science can be corrupted when ignorant political leaders deem themselves competent to arbitrate scientific disputes.”

— Martin Gardner

“Those who serve and those who rule
Lepers, kings and mindless fools
Empire leaders, tyrant's tools
All will fade with time
Hail the cowards, brave at heart
The ugly and the beautiful
Those who never felt their souls
All live transient lives”

— Kreator

“Leaders in all realms and activities of life knew that the power they had come to hold existed because they were responsible to serve the many, thus power was position of service.”

— Vanna Bonta

“True leaders understand that leadership is not about them but about those they serve. It is not about exalting themselves but about lifting others up.”

— Sheri Dew

“Leaders must lead, not push. Leaders must serve, not domineer.”

— Jared C. Wilson

“Maxine Hancock says we should think of ourselves as the servant leaders of our homes. I think by the addition of the word leaders, she implies that while we serve we should also command respect.”

— Sheila Wray Gregoire

“It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one's own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.)-not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition. When men are united by ideas, i.e., by explicit principles, there is no room for favors, whims, or arbitrary power: the principles serve as an objective criterion for determining actions and for judging men, whether leaders or members.”

— Ayn Rand

“Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead.”

— Pete Hoekstra

“When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteoousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders'.”

— Sun Tzu

“What makes a good leader is that they eschew the spotlight in favor of spending time and energy to do what they need to do to support and protect their people. And when we feel the Circle of Safety around us, we offer our blood and sweat and tears and do everything we can to see our leader's vision come to life. The only thing our leaders ever need to do is remember whom they serve and it will be our honor and pleasure to serve them back.”

— Simon Sinek

“He who cannot serve cannot lead. It is by being a servant that you recognize that followers also have needs. True leaders are service oriented!”

— Israelmore Ayivor

“In this place, fun and laughing makes them angry. We are not here to be leaders, we are here to serve.”

— Cecelia Ahern

“Like leaders in many walks of life, my business has been to serve with, and for, others.”

— Stanley A. McChrystal

“I've been a medical and public health professional as well as a mother. I became skilled at juggling a number of priorities and competing interests. Like many other female leaders, I've tried to serve as a role model for the young women at my organization who are trying to balance a high-level leadership position and a family.”

— Margaret Hamburg

“Our job as leaders is to find those innovators and release their mojo - lean startup-style - to serve the American people better.”

— Todd Park

“How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.”

— John C. Maxwell

“Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.”

— Chinua Achebe

“Great leaders don't need to act tough. Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness.”

— Simon Sinek

“Choose food, clothing, and shelter that accords with nature.Rely on your own body for transportation. Allow your work and your recreation to be one and the same. Do exercise that develops your whole being and not just your body. Listen to music that bridges the three spheres of your being. Choose leaders for their virtue rather than their wealth or power. Serve others and cultivate yourself simultaneously. Understand that true growth comes from meeting and solving problems of life in a way that is harmonizing to yourself and to others. If you can follow these simple old ways, you will be continually renewed.”

— Lao Tzu

“He placed us in churches to serve, to care for others, to pray for leaders, to learn, to teach, to give, and, in some cases, to die for the sake of the gospel. Many churches are weak because we have members who have turned the meaning of membership upside down. It's time to get it right. It's time to become a church member as God intended. It's time to give instead of being entitled.”

— Thom S. Rainer

“There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.”

— C. JoyBell C.

“There is ... a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives.”

— Edward S. Herman

“How many people on Earth serve people? And how many people on Earth serve the Earth? The difference in the numbers must be enormous. It would reveal that the Earth is definitely not the primary concern of the human species. This might be fatal both to the Earth and to humanity. Please, leaders of the Earth and the nations, wake up to this potentially fatal disparity.”

— Robert Muller

“Effective leaders of change must serve equally as agents of change and protectors of continuity.”

— Samuel Wilson

“I came, then, to serve my Church first of all, and the whole world, that is, every person I find along my way. I serve and I will give of myself unto death so that there will be no distance between speaking and doing, so that the people will never again say, 'there is a chasm between us and the leaders' and word spread that the Church is far from her people. I know very well that our people are good and that they want from us today to go to them, to seek them out wherever they are, to search out the lost and return them joyfully to the fold. They hunger and thirst for the Word of God.”

— Metropolitan Ephraim Kyriakos

“It is often said that the best leaders are those who serve.”

— Michael Kirby

“The best leaders are servant leaders - they serve those they lead.”

— Tony Hsieh

“The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.”

— John Stott

“Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.”

— Alan Keyes

“Leaders who keep promises and followers who respond in kind create an opportunity generate enormous energy around their commitment to serve others.”

— Max De Pree

“We the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Far from being reluctantly propelled into hostilities by popular war fever, leaders incite that fever in order to gather support for their war policies. Thereby do they attempt to distract the public from pressing domestic matters, serve the overseas interests of U.S. investors, justify gargantuan military budgets, and present themselves as great leaders.”

— Michael Parenti

“Truly effective and inspiring leaders aren't actually driven to lead people; they are driven to serve them.”

— Simon Sinek

“Be an example in your Church activity-honor the Sabbath day, attend your meetings, observe the Word of Wisdom, pay your tithes and offerings, support your leaders, and otherwise keep the commandments. Serve cheerfully and gratefully in every calling you receive. Live worthy of a temple recommend and enjoy the sweet, sacred spirit that comes from frequent temple attendance.”

— Ezra Taft Benson

“Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.”

— Tom Peters

“If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“As a servant leader the way you serve the vision is by developing people so that they can work on that vision even when you're not around. The ultimate sin of an effective servant leader is what happens when you are not there. That was the power of Jesus' leadership-the leaders He trained went on to change the world when He was no longer with them in bodily form.”

— Ken Blanchard