"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me." - Francis Costello "The Departed" -

"When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally." - Lao Tse -

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." - Ralph Nader -

"Inventories can be managed but people must be lead." - Ross Perot -

"A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops." - John J. Pershing -

"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist." - Eric Hoffer -

"The Pre-requisite for effective leadership is good character." - The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan -

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

"Quality has to be caused, not controlled." - Philip Crosby -

"Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer." - Phil Dixon -

"If you think you can do a thing or that you cannot do a thing, in either case you are right." - Henry Ford -

"When the solution is simple, God is answering." - Albert Einstein -

"The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." - Colin Powell -

"The time is always right to do what is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What you cannot enforce, Do not command." Sophocles

"...It is what it is..." - Various -

"Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear." John Madden

"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are." - Ara Parasheghian -

“You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within.” - Bob Nelson -

"The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they eventually surpass him or her in knowledge and ability." - Fred A. Manske, Jr. -

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings-and put compensation as a carrier behind it – you almost don’t have to manage them.” - Jack Welch -

“Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich.” - Robert H. Johnson -

"People don't necessarily choose what's best; they choose what they are most comfortable with, whether it's the best or not" - Garrison Wynn -

“Catch someone doing something right.” - Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson -

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” - Paul Dickson -

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.” - Ronald Regan -

“Don’t equate activity with efficiency.  You are paying your key people to see the big picture.  Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling…” - Harvey Mackay -

“Because a thing seems difficult to you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.” - Marcus Aurelius -

“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” - Stephen R. Covey -

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it…; Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.” - David Ogilvy -

“When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for; judgment and taste.  Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.” - John W. Gardner -

“The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.” - Casey Stingel -

"If two people in a room agree on everything, one of them is clearly unnecessary." - Frank Whelan Smith -

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to see the world.” - John Le Care -

“If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.” - R. Buckminster Fuller -

"If we can build an environment in which people can learn and grow, the grass will not be greener on the other side." - Libby Sartain -

"He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk." - Anonymous -

"The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such." - Andre Maurois -

"Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint." - Lewis H. Lapham -

"The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization." Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers

"When what you are doing isn't working, you tend to do more of the same and with greater intensity." - Dr. Bill Maynard & Tom Champoux -

"A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: "Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain." - Max DePree -

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

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters." - Albert Einstein -

"Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops." - Thomas J. Watson -

On Multi-tasking:  "Spinning more plates doesn't increase your talent-it increases your likelihood of dropping a plate." - Kerry Walls -

"If I had it to do all over again, I'd get help." - John Ghegan -