Graham Chapman Quotes

There are a few people who are, let's say, personality-challenged, who would like to set up a cult, but in large part they fail due to the innate stroppiness and independence of their fellow pagans.

When your leader is misbehaving, it's very easy for other people to follow that.

When we find ourselves in groups or with charismatic individuals, we might do things we wouldn't ordinarily do.

The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty paces ahead of them, but if he is a thousand paces ahead of them, they will neither see nor follow him.

I'm a believer that charisma makes a huge difference in people's decisions to follow you. However, it's not just that you say it well, but it's that you know it well. It helps if you can say it well enough that people want to follow you. Charisma isn't required, but it makes a big difference.

The followers must feel besieged.

I call myself the assistant cult leader.

In the hands of vicious men, a mob will do anything. But under good leaders it's quite a different story.

If you don't like potlucks, the solution to your problem is "don't go to potlucks," not "insist other people don't have them."

There are two kinds of people. There are leaders and there are followers. And I'm a follower.

True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

It was the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader.

We have all seen these circus elephants complete with tusks, ivory in their head and thick skins, who move around the circus ring and grab the tail of the elephant ahead of them.

The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.

Perhaps like attracts like, and that's why I found myself in a circle of women who are so passionate about making music.

This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path. ... He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. ... They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.

The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.

If you don’t know the men at your back by name, don’t be surprised if they won’t follow you into battle. On the other hand, don’t be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.

People will walk through fire for a leader that's true and human.

People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves.

Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others.

A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.

The leader finds the dream and then the people. The people find the leader and then the dream.