LEADING CHANGE Quotes

Helpful Quotes

The Professor's Favorite Page

Like stories, quotes can stimulate thought and insight. Here are some of the favorite quotes of Jordan, our well-read Professor.

If you want to share your favorite quotes with us, Click Here.

Read straight through or jump to your favorite part:

• A Changing World
• Create a Sense of Urgency
• Pull Together the Guiding Team
• Develop the Change Vision and Strategy
• Communicate for Understanding and Buy-In
• Empower Others to Act
• Produce Short-Term Wins
• Don't Let Up
• Create a New Culture

A Changing World

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.
- Jack Welch

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Not everything that is faced can be changed.
But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
- James Baldwin

Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
- John F. Kennedy

Back to Top
Create a Sense of Urgency

The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction.
Lawrence Miller

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
Picasso

Ask with urgency and passion.
Arthur James Balfour

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.
Jim Rohn

The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust

The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.
John Scully

Back To Top

Pull Together the Guiding Team

Blessed is the leader who seeks the best for those he serves.
Unknown

When all think alike, then no one is thinking.
Walter Lippman

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.
Dag Hammarskjoeld

He who has great power should use it lightly.
Seneca

The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill

Commitment is the enemy of resistance, for it is the serious promise to press on, to get up, no matter how many times you are knocked down.
David McNally

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Ralph W. Emerson

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
Michael Jordan

It is amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares about who gets the credit.
Robert Yates

Back To Top

Develop the Change Vision and Strategy

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
Albert Einstein

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.
Marshall McLuhan

Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on with creating the future.
James Bertrand

There's a way to do it better--find it.
Thomas Edison

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
General Colin Powell

Some men look at things the way they are and ask why?
I dream of things that are not and ask why not?
Mark Twain

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.
Seneca

Dissatisfaction and discouragement are not caused by the absence of things but the absence of vision.
Anonymous

We will either find a way or make one.
Hannibal

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo

Back To Top

Communicate for Understanding and Buy-In

In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.
Sigmund Freud

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

We must become the change we want to see.
Mahatma Gandhi

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions
Albert Einstein

The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.
Andrew Carnegie

Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer
Peter Drucker

Back To Top

Empower Others to Act

If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
Admiral Grace Hopper

I never worry about action, only inaction.
Winston Churchill

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done
Peter Drucker

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity
George Patton

Hell, there are no rules here--we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks.
Dick Nicolose

Back To Top

Produce Short-Term Wins

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy.
Unknown

A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.
George Patton

The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Mark Twain

Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters

Back To Top

Don't Let Up

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
Winston Churchill

I'll go anywhere as long as it's forward.
David Livingstone

Champions keep playing until they get it right.
Billie Jean King

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up
Thomas Edison

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Back To Top

Create a New Culture

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann

He that would have fruit must climb the tree.
Thomas Fuller

The soft stuff is always harder than the hard stuff.
Roger Enrico

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles