Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.

Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.

Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.

We must move from ... the primacy of technology toward considerations of social justice and equity, from the dictates of organizational convenience toward the aspirations ofself realization and learning, from authoritarianism and dogmatism toward more participation, from uniformity and centralization toward diversity and pluralism, from the concept of work as hard and unavoidable, from life as nasty, brutish, and short toward work as purpose and self~fulfillment, a recognition of leisure as a valid activity in itself.

One of the worst mistakes is to do nothing.

A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people's lives, for better or worse, sometime forever and ever.