A Quote by Henri Nouwen

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

Henri Nouwen

Quote Topics

Been Desert Great Illusion Leadership Led Man Never Out Someone Think

Quote Author

Henri Nouwen
Dutch - Priest
January 24, 1932 - September 21, 1996

Denys (Finch-Hatton) has been written about before and he will be written about again. If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; he was a great man who never achieved arrogance.

Beryl Markham

Leadership can't be claimed like luggage at the airport. Leadership can't be inherited, even though you may inherit a leadership position. And leadership can't be given as a gift - even if you've been blessed with an abundance of leadership skills to share with someone else. Leadership must be earned by mastering a defined set of skills and by working with others to achieve common goals.

David Cottrell

I have more compassion than if I had led a life where everything worked out exactly as I had planned or if I had never been wounded or if I had never been betrayed or I had never been harmed. I don't think I would be as good a person.

Elizabeth Gilbert

A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.

Shana Alexander

We haven't been leading anybody. We've been acquiescing to a bunch of linguini-spined leftists all over the world, at the United Nations, in NATO, wherever it is. The people who don't even pay for their own defense. The people that don't even believe in guns and bullets to protect yourself are the people we have been acquiescing to. And they think this is called leadership. Leadership is sponsoring America's decline. Leadership is administering America's decline. Leadership is admitting that America's superpower status was never deserved or warranted.

Rush Limbaugh

The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton--Parnell--never a man.

James Joyce

King Fahd was a man of great vision and leadership who inspired his countrymen for a quarter of a century as king. He led Saudi Arabia through a period of unparalleled progress and development.

Tony Blair

I have a great track record, and I have never been sued. If I can't find someone for someone, I refer them out. I have an affiliate division of matchmakers all over the world that I work with. Men like certain types of women, and I can subcontract that out to foreign countries.

Patti Stanger

What is illusion? M.: To whom is the illusion? Find it out. Then illusion will vanish. Generally people want to know about illusion and do not examine to whom it is. It is foolish. Illusion is outside and unknown. But the seeker is considered to be known and is inside. Find out what is immediate, intimate, instead of trying to find out what is distant and unknown.

Ramana Maharshi

I definitely have had fights with best friends. Some of them have led to me and said friend not being friends anymore, but it always turned out to be for the better. I think if you fight with someone, and you can just never reconcile, that just goes to show that maybe you shouldn't have been friends in the first place.

Lili Reinhart

I think there's a lot of anesthesia being - that's been pumped into American culture, the mass media television, various forms of entertainment, and the illusion of wealth that we now understand to be an illusion as well as the illusion that America is a world power.

Parker Palmer

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Michael J. Fox

But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

Deb Caletti

They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone.

Henry Rollins

I'm not under the illusion that everything's just going to be hunky-dory work wise forever. I've never been under that illusion. Things could go away tomorrow.