Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings.
Interpretation
Effective leaders choose capable team members and guide them with care and vigilance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of leadership in military and organizational contexts, highlighting how successful generals (or leaders) surround themselves with intelligent and brave individuals. It suggests that strong leaders not only select capable officers and advisors but also actively nurture and oversee their teams with a fierce devotion, likening their oversight to a powerful animal, which indicates strength and awareness while also being supportive.
In practice
In a motivational speech about management practices.
Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger.
To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity.
First organize the inner, then organize the outer ... First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, and then organize others.
Strength is but one aspect of power.
Battles are not won by strength alone!
Nothing is harder to see into thanpeoples nature. The sage looks at subtle phenomena and listens tosmall voices. This harmonizes the outside with the inside and the inside with the outside.
To be a successful soldier you must know history. . . . What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change but man who uses them changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons - you beat the soul of man of the enemy man.
There is nothing that gives a man consequence, and renders him fit for command, like a support that renders him independent of everybody but the State he serves.
Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately leadership is about creating new realities.
A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.
Presidential power is the power to persuade.
Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past - let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.