A Quote by Arthur Demarest

When there is pressure for leaders to respond to problems or crises, they often simply intensify their efforts in their particular defined sphere of activity - even if that's not relevant to the real problem. To do otherwise requires taking on entrenched practices and asserting power in areas where it often will not be well received. And leaders tend to see major crises more as threats to their own position rather than as systemic challenges for the societies that they govern or the institutions that they manage.

Arthur Demarest

Quote Topics

Activity Areas Challenges Crises Defined Efforts Entrenched Even Govern Institutions Leaders Major Manage More Often Otherwise Own Particular Position Power Practices Pressure Problem Problems Rather Real Real Problem Received Relevant Requires Respond See Simply Societies Sphere Systemic Taking Tend Than Threats Well Will

Quote Author

Arthur Demarest
American - Anthropologist

Fiscal crises often turn into financial crises, dealing a blow to the real economy.

Lee Myung-bak

Leaders tend to focus on 'what to do,' but the real issue is more often 'how to do it.'

Irene Rosenfeld

None of the problems that caused the crises in Europe and America have been resolved. They have been delayed and expanded by more debt and more money printing and will lead to more and worse crises.

Bill Bonner

If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises...it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.

Carmen Reinhart

The power of the individual, market forces, and the private sector permeate our lives. With that power comes responsibility to address huge challenges. Climate change cannot be solved by governments alone. Xenophobia, hatred, and intolerance - more business leaders have to play a role in trying to be positive leaders, civic leaders.

Daniel Lubetzky

My message to Washington is the United States has gone through incredible crises, and our leaders have been able to find common ground. And that's what our leaders have to do.

Kenneth Chenault

Fundamental systemic crises are often associated with the decline of the dominant imperial power and its increasing inability to sustain the system over which it had previously presided. The profound instability of the interwar period owed much to Britain's inability to maintain its role.

Martin Jacques

The Democratic Party has had a real problem with recruitment because the party too often looks at just who's next in line in the party to run rather than in finding inspiring new leaders.

Seth Moulton

Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises - car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change.

David Suzuki

Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.

Kofi Annan

We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

In the seed and the soil, we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crises of violence and war. The crises of hunger and disease. The crisis of the destruction of democracy.

Vandana Shiva

Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life.

Karen Armstrong

In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, often under great time pressure, leaders must make decisions and take effective actions to assure the survival and success of their organizations. This is how leaders add value to their organizations. They lead them to success by exercising good judgment, by making smart calls when especially difficult and complicated decisions simply must be made, and then ensuring that they are well executed.

Warren G. Bennis

Leaders who want to show sensitivity should listen often and long and talk short and seldom. Many so-called leaders are too busy to listen. True leaders know that time spent listening is well invested.