Edwin H. Friedman Quotes
A leader must separate his or her own emotional being from that of his or her followers while still remaining connected. Vision is basically an emotional rather than a cerebral phenomenon, depending more on a leader’s capacity to deal with anxiety than his or her professional training or degree. A leader needs the capacity not only to accept the solitariness that comes with the territory, but also to come to love it. These criteria are based on the recognition that “no good deed goes unpunished”; chronic criticism is, if anything, often a sign that the leader is functioning better! Vision is not enough.
Quotes to Explore
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My idols are Janis Joplin and Annie Lennox, who are neither of them from the typical pop culture.
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Generally I can sleep any time, anywhere, any place, unless I'm anxious about work. I can get performance anxiety, so when I'm on tour it can be hard to sleep.
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Time is the ultimate long tail. Even with a big wad of money up front, if something sells forever, the back end is what ultimately counts.
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Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative.
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I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.
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Maybe it's a little depressing to think that my vision of a perfect world is actually so messed up, but I think it means that I don't really understand what 'perfect' is.
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What I don't like to hear in music is something has not been thought through: that a sound is just there randomly. I want to make sure that every single little noise that's in my song is there because it's supposed to be there.
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The focus of Congress is on keeping the nation secure - and it doesn't see that food security is an essential part of that responsibility. Instead of putting more food on the tables of America, they are busy finding ways to take it away.
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Even Colin Powell who was everywhere before he became secretary of state, just stopped going out. I think part of it was he didn't want to be viewed suspiciously by the other people in the White House who rarely go anywhere.
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In a small space, you want to keep the bedding as simple as possible so it looks clean, calm and collected.
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No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
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Every character I approach, from 'Forrest Gump' all the way up to 'The Spoils Before Dying,' has a different set of requirements and always fascinates me.
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I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.
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The terrorists that we are up against today do not rely upon cell phones and SAT phones and emails. They rely on couriers. You cannot intercept what a courier is telling somebody.
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One thing I'm not going to do is chase staying alive. You spend so much time chasing staying alive, you won't live.
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Wanted: a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a low estimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting a living.
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I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.
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Shopping for hijabs has always been fun for me. I was so excited to begin wearing a headscarf. I had always looked up to my mother as she wore hers, and I was eager to emulate her beauty and the wonderful things she represented.
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A warrior of the light never confuses tension with anxiety.
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The right-minded man, ever inclined to righteous and lawful deeds, is joyous day and night, and strong, and free from care. But if a man take no heed of the right, and leave undone the things he ought to do, then will the recollection of no one of all his transgressions bring him any joy, but only anxiety and self-reproaching.
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I think it's very important to be able to hear from our public leaders in ways that they can't entirely orchestrate, seeing them speak live and unscripted and take questions that they themselves haven't arranged ahead of time. I think this is a way in which citizens who are deciding what they think of their leaders who govern in their name, this is one of the ways in which they can evaluate how they feel about the quality of the leadership.
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Nobody in my family was musical. I had no idea you could be a songwriter and make a living at it. It was all discovery. It was all just thrown at me.
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If U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.
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A leader must separate his or her own emotional being from that of his or her followers while still remaining connected. Vision is basically an emotional rather than a cerebral phenomenon, depending more on a leader’s capacity to deal with anxiety than his or her professional training or degree. A leader needs the capacity not only to accept the solitariness that comes with the territory, but also to come to love it. These criteria are based on the recognition that “no good deed goes unpunished”; chronic criticism is, if anything, often a sign that the leader is functioning better! Vision is not enough.
