A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership
James Comey
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Whenever I speak to young people, I suggest they do something that might seem a little odd: Close your eyes, I say. Sit there, and imagine you are at the end of your life. From that vantage point, the smoke of striving for recognition and wealth is cleared. Houses, cars, awards on the wall? Who cares? You are about to die. Who do you want to have been? I tell them that I hope some of them decide to have been people who used their abilities to help those who needed it—the weak, the struggling, the frightened, the bullied. Standing for something. Making a difference. That is true wealth.”
“The easy, casual lies—those are a very dangerous thing. They open up the path to the bigger lies, in more important places, where the consequences aren’t so harmless.”
“The Constitution and the rule of law are not partisan political tools. Lady Justice wears a blindfold. She is not supposed to peek out to see how her political master wishes her to weigh a matter.”
“But forest fires, as painful as they can be, bring growth. They spur growth that was impossible before the fire, when old trees crowded out new plants on the forest floor. In the midst of this fire, I already see new life—young people engaged as never before, and the media, the courts, academics, nonprofits, and all other parts of civil society finding reason to bloom.”
“We all have a tendency to surrender our moral authority to “the group,” to still our own voices and assume that the group will handle whatever difficult issue we face. We imagine that the group is making thoughtful decisions, and if the crowd is moving in a certain direction, we follow, as if the group is some moral entity larger than ourselves. In the face of the herd, our tendency is to go quiet and let the group’s brain and soul handle things. Of course, the group has no brain or soul separate from each of ours. But by imagining that the group has these centers, we abdicate responsibility, which allows all groups to be hijacked by the loudest voice, the person who knows how brainless groups really are and uses that to his advantage.”
“There is meaning and purpose in not surrendering in the face of loss, but instead working to bind up wounds, ease pain, and spare others what you have seen.”
“Ethical leaders choose a higher loyalty to those core values over their own personal gain.”
“Those leaders who never think they are wrong, who never question their judgments or perspectives, are a danger to the organizations and people they lead.”
“Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear.”
“there is no such thing as negative feedback or positive feedback; there is only accurate feedback,”
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