Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

It is circumstance and proper timing that give an action its character and make it either good or bad.

Don't be so foolish as to ask for more time: calamities will not wait.

A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.

When the public or the Council pass the buck up to me I am going to act.

As a commander-in-chief what you do and what you say has real consequences.

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you're decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.

We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don't give a second thought to the chances we take.

Everything that happens is meant to be. It's meant to happen like that. But sometimes you don't know at the time that it's meant to be disaster.

In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow.

There is only one way to respond to the issue of leadership and that is to lead.

I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts ... but I don’t see myself being Queen of this country.

Do you think it’s wise, darling? You know you’ve got to rule this afternoon.

A little too late, is much too late.

I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.

The challenge of our times is to leave nothing to chance.

Who reflects too much will accomplish little.

A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.

Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented. We miss it, and months and years are lost.

Nothing we do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.

No one can move without some leadership.

I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

In a very real way, ownership is the essence of leadership. When you are 'ridiculously in charge,' then you own whatever happens in a company, school, et cetera.

You reach a certain point in your life where they things you do and say do make a difference.

What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.

Time is death.