Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.
Interpretation
Leadership involves the complex dynamics of power and responsibility, affecting both the leader and those they lead.
The quote by Theodore White emphasizes that the nature of leadership is defined by how one interacts with power and responsibility. It illustrates that a leader's experience can vary greatly, as they may feel burdened or liberated by their role, and are influenced by external factors or may serve to influence others. This intrinsic complexity is central to understanding what it truly means to lead.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, to highlight the complexities of being in charge.
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
You ask how I feel to be the first female president in southern Africa? It's heavy for me. Heavy in the sense that I feel that I'm carrying this heavy load on behalf of all women.
No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.
That is the difference we make in the world. And our own safety, our own security, depends upon our willingness to do what it takes to defend this nation and uphold the values that we stand for - timeless ideals that will endure long after those who offer only hate and destruction have been vanquished from the Earth.
Not even the King himself has the right to subordinate the interests of his country to his own feelings of love or hatred towards strangers; he is, however, responsible towards God and not to me if he does so, and therefore on this point I am silent.
Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
When leaders claim that God bypasses their followers and speaks directly to them, they greatly diminish all God does through the lives of believers.Leaders who begrudge people the opportunity to seek God themselves and who do not actively teach their people how to hear God's voice have disqualified themselves as spiritual leaders.
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