“The Leader is but an instrument”

Tuesday, 04 August 2015 20:07

Heart Start Coaching

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     “The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.  In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us, is spend and be spent.  It is a little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind.  We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.  If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us.”

            — Theodore Roosevelt   

 

[Martha Lupton, The Speaker’s Desk Book, (Maxwell Droke, Indianapolis, 1937) p. 660]