Progressive Leadership Quotes

While I'm leader, nothing will be off limits - there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed.

Every sailor knows that you can't sail a ship that isn't moving forward, strong leaders understand that to change direction, you first have to create forward progress.

We leaders should leave the tradition that we have become crazy for God.

An ability to embrace new ideas, routinely challenge old ones, and live with paradox will be the effective leader's premier trait.

I strongly believe that at this point in America's history, we need a president that will not just continue, even with a new face and with some changes and with some maverick aspects, who will not just continue, basically, the policies we have been following in recent years. I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change.

A leader without the vision, to strive to improve things, is no good. Then you will just stay put, you won't progress.

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.

We as mayors have the opportunity to push the envelope and get people thinking, even when it is not politically popular. Cities hold the key.

Every country needs a strong leader in order to progress.

Leaders make things better and that requires change.

Leaders must go ahead even when moving ahead is controversial. You must be ahead of time, because if you want to represent the status quo, what do you need leaders for?

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

This nation has been through hard times. But those hard times have hardened our resolve. I'm ready to do the difficult work ahead. But I want to do that work with Barack Obama, and not a Tea Party ideologue. We can move America forward, but we can only do it together.

The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.

White men have screwed this country up! I would like a black, female…. everything all rolled into one.I want something different. I want a real change. People, I want a president who speaks well, who has a sense of humor. This guy is such a moron! It's beyond the point where it's a joke. He's an idiot.

A youth is capable of bringing things together and changing the direction too. They can come together and bring changes. There is no need of breaking anything, but need is to bring changes.

A tired nation, said David Lloyd George, is a Tory nation, and the United States today cannot afford to be either tired or Tory.

In Washington, common sense policy is considered bold.

Hillary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.

It is fair to say, Bernie Sanders, that in your definition, as you being the self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism, I don't know anyone else who fits that definition, but I know a lot of really hard fighting progressives in the Democratic party who have stood up time, and time again against special interests, against the powerful on behalf of those who are left behind and left out.

The main thing is that Ataturk saw the desperate condition of the countries that had not had an industrial revolution. Ataturk saw where history was going. He really did in Turkey what we are all hoping somebody will do in [Islamic] countries where fundamentalists thrive, that they get somebody today that has the vision that Ataturk had in 1915.

It is time for a new generation of leadership.

I hope many of you will be people that question why things are and why we have to do them the way we have always done them. I hope you will take some risks, exert some real leadership on issues, and if you will, dance along the edge of the roof as you continue for life.

Claude Kirk could be hysterically funny and fearlessly bold, and he championed the environment, education, and diversity long before those issues were fashionable.

I'm optimistic about our future as a party. It's about winning. The Democratic Party, if I had to do one word: winning. We need to win elections, because one thing I've learned is that when Democrats win good things happen to a lot of folks, and when we don't do so hot, we see a lot of chaos and carnage.