While you cannot deliver policies without principles, you cannot deliver principles without having power. You have quickly to move to a stage where, emphasising your principles, you build a programme, then call for popular support.
Interpretation
Principles are essential for policies, but they require power to be implemented effectively.
This quote by Gordon Brown emphasizes the intertwined relationship between principles and power in leadership. It suggests that while a leader must uphold strong principles to guide their policies, these principles alone are not sufficient for action; effective leadership requires the authority or support to transform those principles into tangible programs that resonate with the public and garner their backing.
In practice
In a motivational speech about leadership ethics, you could use this quote to highlight the need for principled action.
Our mission is, in truth, historic and world changing - to build, over the next fifty years and beyond, a global low carbon economy. And it is not overdramatic to say that the character and course of the coming century will be set by how we measure up to this challenge
No one should be held back from realising their potential by fears that they will not be able to afford to go to university or that they will graduate with unmanageable levels of debt.
To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.
Collective European Union action could mean no hiding places for evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders, and no treasure islands for money launderers.
A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.
Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.
The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
When you're one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.
A good commander is benevolent and unconcerned with fame.
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