Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of preparation and being ready to communicate effectively in a leadership role.
In this quote, Dwight D. Eisenhower reflects on his experience as president of Columbia University, emphasizing that effective leaders must be prepared to speak or deliver messages at any moment. The phrase 'speak at the drop of a hat' suggests the necessity for readiness in communication, while the mention of trustees being expected to speak 'at the passing of the hat' underscores the shared responsibility of leaders to engage actively and responsively in their roles.
In practice
During a leadership workshop, I quoted Eisenhower to emphasize the need for agility in communication.
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
When pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his: above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.
We are human behind and this part of our human nature that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands. In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, and that time I realized that education is very important, and education is the power for women. And that's why the terrorists are afraid of education. They do not want women to get education because then women will become more powerful.
You have to dream. We all have to dream. Dreaming is OK. Imagine me teaching from space, all over the world, touching so many peoples lives. Thats a teachers dream! I have a vision of the world as a global village, a world without boundaries. Imagine a history teacher making history!
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.
Do not be an arrogant scholar, for scholarship cannot subsist with arrogance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.