W. Ryan Melson

“Leadership, like fertilizer, contains elements that can be volatile or nurturing, depending on how one handles them.”
― Raymond M. Kethledge, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

“Time is an unrenewable resource. You can’t get it back. All these things we’ve done to exchange information, to access information at our fingertips, have actually taken away our time for restoring the soul. You’re giving away your soul’s ability to be moved. If we’d spend more time in solitude, we’d value ourselves more.”
― Raymond M. Kethledge, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

“At the supreme moment of his career, Crazy Horse took in the situation with a glance, then acted with great decisiveness. He fought with his usual reckless bravery on Custer Hill, providing as always an example for the other warriors to admire, draw courage from, and emulate, but his real contribution to this greatest of all Indian victories was mental, not physical. For the first time in his life, Crazy Horse’s presence was decisive on the battlefield not because of his courage, but because of his brain. But one fed on the other. His outstanding generalship had brought him at the head of a ferocious body of warriors to the critical point at the critical moment. Then with his courage he took advantage of the situation to sweep down on Custer and stamp his name, and that of Custer, indelibly on the pages of the nation’s history.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

“Praise and attention are fleeting, and then gone. The leader is left feeling empty unless she authentically connects her success with a more lasting purpose.”
― Raymond M. Kethledge, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude