Erwin McManus Quotes

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity.

The man of upright life is obeyed before he speaks.

Good men who exercise power are really the most fascinating of all people.

One person of integrity can make a difference.

... The future is very markedly in your hands, its value and its moral standing in the world and among ourselves. If you will take the power you have and use it, I have no fear of the outcome of the future.

Money will not purchase character or good government.

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Never descend to the ways of those above you.

It is not true that people of high principle are ill-suited for politics.

It isn't polls or public opinion at the moment that counts. It is right and wrong and leadership--men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.

Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.

One cannot hold power and not use it.

Possessed of courage but devoid of morality, a superior man will make trouble while a small man will be a brigand.

Power always brings with it responsibility.

There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.

Cowards can never be moral.

The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.

Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other.

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet.

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership.