Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying, but the important thing is to laugh, every chance we get.
Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.
The servant-leader is servant first. . . It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first.
The best leaders are clear. They continually light the way, and in the process, let each person know that what they do makes a difference. The best test as a leader is: Do those served grow as persons; do they become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become leaders?
Good leaders must first become good servants.
Moral authority is another way to define servant leadership because it represents a reciprocal choice between leader and follower. If the leader is principle centered, he or she will develop moral authority. If the follower is principle centered, he or she will follow the leader. In this sense, both leaders and followers are followers. Why? They follow truth. They follow natural law. They follow principles. They follow a common, agreed-upon vision. They share values. They grow to trust one another.
Leadership must first and foremost meet the needs of others.
I'm the most un-diva-ish person you'll meet. I'm never rude to people and I am always on time.
I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn't even feel it.
Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.
The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet.