Leadership Quote by James MacGregor Burns

Burns slips a moral grenade into what looks like a polite management tip. The line rejects the oldest leadership reflex: sorting people into “useful” and “important,” disposable and protected. By pairing “pawns” with “princes,” he’s not just describing hierarchy; he’s mocking its emotional logic. Leaders tend to fawn upward and instrumentalize downward, then call the result “realism.” Burns argues that’s not realism at all - it’s bad judgment dressed up as savvy.

The phrase “in real life” matters. Burns wrote in a century when leadership theory often romanticized the heroic individual (the great man, the commanding executive) or, conversely, reduced organizations to systems and incentives. His corrective is both ethical and practical: treating people as “persons” is the only approach that scales without corroding trust. Dehumanization is efficient in the moment and catastrophic over time; it breeds silence, cynicism, and the kind of performative loyalty that collapses under stress.

Subtext: “pawns” are not merely subordinates; they’re anyone a leader is tempted to treat as a means - staff, voters, soldiers, interns, constituents. “Princes” aren’t just elites; they’re the donors, board members, celebrity allies whose egos leaders manage like fragile assets. Burns is telling leaders to stop playing the court game. Personhood isn’t sentimentality here; it’s a discipline: listen, tell the truth, distribute dignity consistently, and you get clearer information, sturdier coalitions, fewer self-inflicted crises.

It’s also a quiet theory of power: the leader who refuses to worship rank gains something rarer than obedience - legitimacy.