James MacGregor Burns Quotes

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In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.

James MacGregor Burns

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

James MacGregor Burns

Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership.

James MacGregor Burns

Leaders are not pale reflectors of major social conflicts; they play up some, play down others, ignore still others.

James MacGregor Burns

To elevate the goals of humankind, to achieve high moral purpose, to realize major intended change, leaders must thrust themselves into the most intractable processes and structures of history and ultimately master them.

James MacGregor Burns

Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.

James MacGregor Burns

Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.

James MacGregor Burns

The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.

James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns

Born: August 3, 1918

Died: July 15, 2014 (aged 95)

Bio: James MacGregor Burns was an American historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies.

Known for:

Transforming Leadership (2003)
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1940-1945 (1970)
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956)
The three Roosevelts (2001)
The vineyard of liberty (1982)

James MacGregor Burns on Wikipedia

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