America is America. It's a capitalist system. They [leaders] have enshrined that belief that profit matters more than anything else. The polarization of the society is just the resurfacing of that.
Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.
Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous. Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.
The best form of leadership is to be conscious of the leadership potential with the followers and to let them unleash this potential in a spontaneous way. When a great leader accomplishes this task with effortless ease, the followers say, "We did it ourselves."
The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.
Everything I have personally experienced, and that also has been expressed by the leaders of the great religions points to the fact that a global spirituality already exists and was intrinsically there from the start as God (by whatever name) is one and is indivisible - everywhere outside time and place.
Political leaders or governments owe their position partly to force and partly to popular election. They cannot be regarded as representative of best elements, morally or intellectually, in their respective nations.
Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.