This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership THE LAW OF THE LID — Leadership Ability Determines a Person’s Level of Effectiveness. THE LAW OF INFLUENCE — The True Measure of Leadership is Influence — Nothing More, Nothing Less. THE LAW OF PROCESS — Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day. THE LAW OF NAVIGATION — Anyone Can Steer the Ship, But It Takes a Leader to Chart the Course.. THE LAW OF ADDITION — Leaders Add Value by Serving Others. THE LAW OF SOLID GROUND — Truth is the Foundation of Leadership. THE LAW OF RESPECT — People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves. THE LAW OF INTUITION — Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias. THE LAW OF MAGNETISM – Who You Are is Who You Attract. THE LAW OF CONNECTION. – Leaders Touch a Heart Before They Ask for a Hand. THE LAW OF THE INNER CIRCLE – A Leader’s Potential is Determined by Those Closest to Him. THE LAW OF EMPOWERMENT – Only Secure Leaders Give Power to Others. THE LAW OF THE PICTURE – People Do What People See. THE LAW OF BUY-IN – People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision. THE LAW OF VICTORY – Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win. THE LAW OF THE BIG MO – Momentum is a Leader’s Best Friend. THE LAW OF PRIORITIES – Leaders Understand that Activity is Not Necessarily Accomplishment. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE – A Leader Must Give Up to Go Up. THE LAW OF TIMING – When to Lead is As Important as What to Do and Where to Go. THE LAW OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH – To Add Growth, Lead Followers – To Multiply, Lead Leaders. THE LAW OF LEGACY – A Leader’s Lasting Value is Measured by Succession.
Ability | Growth | Heart | Important | Influence | Intuition | Law | Nothing | People | Power | Respect | Sacrifice | Truth | Respect | Leader | Leadership | Understand | Value |
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.
Influence | Little | Time | Title | Leadership |
It's true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime. You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honor over personal gain. Character makes trust possible, and trust is the foundation of leadership. Character creates consistency, and if your people know what they can expect from you, they will continue to look to you for leadership. Over time, is it easier or harder to sustain your influence within your organization? With charisma alone, influence becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain. With character, as time passes, influence builds and requires less work to sustain.
Character | Charisma | Honor | Influence | Integrity | People | Time | Trust | Truth | Will | Work |
How we see and hold the full range of our experiences in our minds and in our hearts makes an enormous difference in the quality of this journey we are on and what it means to us. It can influence where we go, what happens, what we learn, and how we feel along the way.
John Abbott, fully John Stevens Cabot Abbott
Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined.
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
What is this thing called life? I believe that the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life, only we do not call it so--I speak of the life... makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow from a chemical reaction? I think they were here already, I think the rocks and the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies have their various consciousness, all things are conscious; but the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass to concentrate the heat and make it catch fire...but those and all things have their own awareness, as the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all, like the cells of a man's body making one being, they make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation - have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.
God | Honor | Influence | Men | Sin | Temptation | Virtue | Virtue | Wonder | God | Temptation |
Death is not regarded as a natural affair by primitive man. Death is believed to be due to the intervention of some malevolent or at least not well disposed power. Normally it should not take place. So we have all through history crude explanations of death, as e.g., the influence of the serpent, the devil, sin.
Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
Seven Laws of Salem: Give children the opportunity for self-discovery. [Give them a chance to discover themselves.] Make the children meet with triumph and defeat. [See to it that they experience both success and defeat.] Give the children the opportunity of self-effacement in the common cause. [See to it that they have the chance to forget themselves in the pursuit of a common cause.] Provide periods of silence. [See to it that there are periods of silence.] Train the imagination. [Train the imagination, the ability to participate and plan.] Make games important but not predominant. [Take sports and games seriously, but only as part of the whole.] Free the sons of the wealthy and powerful from the enervating sense of privilege. [Free them of the rich and influential parents and from the paralysing influence of wealth and privelege.]
Ability | Chance | Children | Experience | Important | Influence | Opportunity | Parents | Sense | Success | Wealth |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or less degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning.
Beginning | Error | Experience | Influence | Judgment | Will |
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority
Absolute | Corruption | Influence | Men | Power |
Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.
A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM
Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right thinking to realize why fear occurs. Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.
Awareness | Belief | Cost | Fear | Hope | Influence | Little | Mind | Power | Reason | Respect | Right | Thinking | Thought | Respect | Awareness | Afraid | Think | Thought |
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; but still more when they are super bad and add the tendency of the certainty of corruption of authority.
Corruption | Influence | Men |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.
Achievement | Age | Evolution | Famous | Improvement | Influence | Land | Need | People | Progress | Regard | Weapons |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
If the small minority of enlightened citizens who are able to conceive sound principles of political management do not succeed in winning the support of their fellow citizens and converting them to the endorsement of policies that bring and preserve prosperity, the cause of mankind and civilization is hopeless. There is no other means to safeguard a propitious development of human affairs than to make the masses of inferior people adopt the ideas of the elite. This has to be achieved by convincing them. It cannot be accomplished by a despotic regime that instead of enlightening the masses beats them into submission. In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
Ability | Cause | Civilization | Future | Ideas | Influence | Mankind | Means | Opinion | People | Principles | Public | Right | Sound | Will | Winning |
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
Pantheism makes God into a present, real, and material being; empiricism – to which rationalism also belongs – makes God into an absent, remote, unreal, and negative being. Empiricism does not deny God existence, but denies him all positive determinations, because their content is supposed to be only finite and empirical; the infinite cannot, therefore, be an object for man. But the more determinations I deny to a being, the more do I cut it of[ from myself, and the less power and influence do I concede to it over me, the freer do I make myself of it. The more qualities I possess, the more I am for others, and the greater is the extent of my influence and effects. And the more one is, the more one is known to others. Hence, each negation of an attribute of God is a partial atheism, a sphere of godlessness.
Margaret Sanger, fully Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee
The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order.