URBS 230—Community
Leadership and Service Learning
Interesting Quotes
“Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends…. But we, insofaras we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance.”
Ursula LeGuin, The Farthest Shore,
pp. 74-75
We build on foundations we did not lay
We warm ourselves by fires we did not light
We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant
We drink from wells we did not dig
We profit from persons we did not know
This is as it should be.
Together we are more than any one person could be.
Together we can build across the generations.
Together we can renew our hope and faith in the life that is yet to unfold.
Together we can heed the call to a ministry of care and justice.
We are ever bound in community.
May it always be so.
Rev. Peter Raible
“Mother’s Day Proclamation,” Julia Ward
Howe, 1870
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God—
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.”
“…in war there is no victory which cannot be regarded as unsuccessful, for the objective which one aims at is the total annihilation of the enemy and this result is never attained; yet there are wars which are won and wars which are lost. So it is with any activity; failure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult.”
Pierrefeu, Plutarch Lied
Wake Up.
Day Calls You.
Wake up. Day calls you
To your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
…your task
Is to carry your life high,
And play with it, hurl it
Like a voice to the clouds
So it may retrieve the light
Already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live.
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.
Pedro Salinas
What Any Lover Learns
Water is heavy silver over stone.
Water is heavy silver over stone’s
Refusal. It does not fall. It fills. It flows
Every crevice, every fault of stone,
Every hollow. River does not run.
River presses its heavy silver self
Down into stone and stone refuses.
What runs,
Swirling and leaping into sun, is stone’s
Refusal of the river, not the river.
Archibald
MacLeish
I may be silent, but
I’m thinking.
I may not talk, but
Don’t mistake me for a wall.
Tsubui Shigeji
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much;
it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
So, since a price will be exacted from us for everything we do or leave undone, we should pluck up the courage to win, to win back our finer and kinder and healthier selves.
Maya Angelou Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey
Now
May the little that we know
Be enough to guide us
As we seek the truth that no on completely comprehends
And no one lives without.
“Yo di
zot libete pa pohm kaunel an
bout branch! For zot desann rachey,
rachey, rachey!”
(I say that
Patrick Chamoisseaux Texaco
Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Competent and responsible citizens are informed and thoughtful, participate in their community, are involved politically, and exhibit moral & civic virtues.”
NCSS (2008) “A Vision of Powerful Teaching
and Learning in the Social Studies:
Building Effective Citizens” Social Education, 72(5), 277-280
“It is better to tolerate the small vices of our neighbors, else in the name of righteousness we cut the tendrils of community.”
William Schulz
Leadership Quotes http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_leadership.html
It's hard to lead a cavalry
charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
The term “power” comes from the Latin posse: to do, to be able, to change, to influence or effect. To have power is to
possess the capacity to control or direct change. All forms of leadership must
make use of power. The central issue of power in leadership is not Will it be
used? But rather Will it be used wisely and well?
Great spirits have always
found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it
when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly
and courageously uses his intelligence.
I always believe that
ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and
good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start
taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.
But the fact that some
geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are
geniuses. They laughed at
If you make people think
they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate
you.
You do not lead by hitting
people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
Leadership can be thought
of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and
expands a vision of the future.
What you always do before
you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are
listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined,
you call on them to help you sell it.
In times of change,
learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully
equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
It is not so much that man
is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.
I never had much faith in
leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be
charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the
intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you
go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional
Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and
cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives
of the masses -- you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms,
that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am
very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that
I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from
the ranks.
I am a man of fixed and
unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
Whoever is providing
leadership needs to be as fresh and thoughtful and reflective as possible to
make the very best fight.
The only safe ship in a
storm is leadership.
Inventories can be managed,
but people must be led.
A community is like a ship;
everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
I cannot give you the
formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try
to please everybody.
If I have seen farther than
others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
A leader must have the courage
to act against an expert's advice.
James Kouzes and Barry Posner:
There's nothing more
demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what
we're doing.
James Kouzes and Barry Posner:
[Y]ou
must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as
human beings.
Divorced from ethics,
leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.
A leader or a man of action
in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons
for his action.
Time is neutral and does
not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
Pity the leader caught
between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.
Most important, leaders can
conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty
preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best
efforts.
Leadership involves finding
a parade and getting in front of it.
If your actions inspire
others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
In leadership writ large,
mutually agreed upon purposes help people achieve consensus, assume
responsibility, work for the common good, and build community.
The key to successful
leadership today is influence, not authority.
Leadership is not
manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested
by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying
any means and any measures.
When leaders take back
power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed,
and deeply stressed.
I suppose leadership at one
time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
It is the responsibility of
intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
Leaders shouldn't attach
moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you
can't compromise.
The leaders who work most
effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because
they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think
"I." They think "we"; they think "team." They
understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept
responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This
is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
What is the manager's job?
It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward
opportunities for economically significant results. This sounds trite -- and it
is. But every analysis of actual allocation of resources and efforts in
business that I have ever seen or made showed clearly that the bulk of time,
work, attention, and money first goes to problems rather than to opportunities,
and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will
have minimal impact on results.
Systems
thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a
framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns
of change rather than static "snapshots." It is a set of general
principles -- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning
fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and
management.... During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to
understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political,
ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking
is a sensibility -- for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living
systems their unique character.
A tyrant is always stirring
up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Humans are ambitious and
rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us
and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to
follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best,
not our worst.
I start with the premise
that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Abraham Lincoln did not go
to
Good leaders must first become
good servants.
Keep your fears to
yourself, but share your inspiration with others.
Leaders are more powerful
role models when they learn than when they teach.
A leader takes people where
they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want
to go but ought to be.
Effective leadership is
putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it
out.
Cautious, careful people,
always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never
can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be
anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in
season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and
their advocates, and bear the consequences.
The very essence of
leadership is that you have to have a vision.
You who are journalists,
writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected
that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving
speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.
If you're not confused,
you're not paying attention.
The art of leadership is
saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Some leaders are born
women.
Leaders aren't born they
are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And
that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
The final test of a leader
is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry
on.
The final test of a leader is
that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
South African Archbishop
Desmond Tutu walked by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of
one person. A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said,
"I don't make way for gorillas." At which Tutu stepped aside, made a
deep sweeping gesture, and said, "Ah, yes, but I do."
The manager asks how and
when; the leader asks what and why.
The manager accepts the
status quo; the leader challenges it.
The most dangerous
leadership myth is that leaders are born -- that there is a genetic factor to
leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain
charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true.
Leaders are made rather than born.
The price of greatness is
responsibility.
© 2002 A.J.Filipovitch
Revised 14 May 2010