A Supreme Leader typically refers to a figure in the highest leadership position of an entity, group, organization, or state, who exercises strong or all-powerful authority over it. In religion, the supreme leader or supreme leaders is God or gods. In politics, a supreme leader is typically an all-powerful figure who has a cult of personality associated with them, such as Adolf Hitler as Führer in Germany, Benito Mussolini as Duce in Italy, Joseph Stalin as vozhd in the Soviet Union, the Supreme Leader of Iran, or the Supreme Leader of North Korea.
There have been many dictators and political party leaders who have assumed such personal and/or political titles to evoke their supreme authority. Particularly during the Second World War, many fascist and other comparable right-wing figures directly modelled these after Hitler's Führer and Mussolini's il Duce. During and after the Cold War, several socialist and communist leaders also assumed such titles, as did some other politicians at different points in time.
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Famous quotes containing the words supreme and/or leader:
“Few and signally blessed are those whom Jupiter has destined to be cabbage-planters. For they’ve always one foot on the ground and the other not far from it. Anyone is welcome to argue about felicity and supreme happiness. But the man who plants cabbages I now positively declare to be the happiest of mortals.”
—François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553)
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss.... The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)