100 Best Quotes On Leadership
A
great quote can provide personal inspiration and can be used to educate others;
in my book Employee
Engagement 2.0
I open every chapter with an enlightening quotation. Below are my top 100
leadership quotes of all time.
- A leader is best when people barely know he exists,
when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it
ourselves. —Lao Tzu
- Where there is no vision, the people perish. —Proverbs
29:18
- I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
—Benjamin Disraeli
- You manage things; you lead people. —Rear Admiral Grace
Murray Hopper
- The first responsibility of a leader is to define
reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a
servant. —Max DePree
- Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
—Warren Bennis
- Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. — General
George Patton
- Before you are a leader, success is all about growing
yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
—Jack Welch
- A leader is a dealer in hope. —Napoleon Bonaparte
- You don’t need a title to be a leader. –Multiple
Attributions
- A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and
shows the way. —John Maxwell
- My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity
and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character
which inspires confidence. —General Montgomery
- Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights,
the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building
of a personality beyond its normal limitations. —Peter Drucker
- Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned
citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead
- The nation will find it very hard to look up to the
leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground. —Sir Winston Churchill
- The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are
born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in
fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. —Warren Bennis
- To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
—Andre Malraux
- He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good
commander. —Aristotle
- Become the kind of leader that people would follow
voluntarily; even if you had no title or position. —Brian Tracy
- I start with the premise that the function of
leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. —Ralph Nader
- Effective leadership is not about making speeches or
being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. —Peter
Drucker
- Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
—Publilius Syrus
- A great person attracts great people and knows how to
hold them together. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- The best executive is the one who has sense enough to
pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep
from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt
- Leadership is influence. —John C. Maxwell
- You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some
place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. —Ken Kesey
- When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to
find the means to carry it out. —Napoleon Bonaparte
- Men make history and not the other way around. In
periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress
occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change
things for the better. —Harry S. Truman
- People buy into the leader before they buy into the
vision. —John Maxwell
- So much of what we call management consists in making
it difficult for people to work. —Peter Drucker
- The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It
is very easy to say yes. —Tony Blair
- The very essence of leadership is that you have to have
a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on
every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. —Reverend Theodore
Hesburgh
- The key to successful leadership today is influence,
not authority. —Kenneth Blanchard
- A good general not only sees the way to victory; he
also knows when victory is impossible. —Polybius
- A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes
from passion, not position. —John Maxwell
- A leader takes people where they want to go. A great
leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to
be. —Rosalynn Carter
- The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not
rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but
not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have
humor, but without folly. —Jim Rohn
- Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the
self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s
amazing what they can accomplish. —Sam Walton
- A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the
courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs
of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the
equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. —Douglas
MacArthur
- A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
—Ovid
- No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all
himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. —Andrew Carnegie
- Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do
something you want done because he wants to do it. —General Dwight
Eisenhower
- The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must
talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. —Eric Hoffer
- Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers
think and talk about the problems. —Brian Tracy
- A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his
back on the crowd. —Max Lucado
- Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to
do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. —General George Patton
- As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be
those who empower others. —Bill Gates
- All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in
common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety
of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of
leadership. —John Kenneth Galbraith
- Do what you feel in your heart to be right–for you’ll
be criticized anyway. —Eleanor Roosevelt
- Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they
are necessary to leadership. —Donald Rumsfeld
- Education is the mother of leadership. —Wendell Willkie
- Effective leadership is putting first things first.
Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. —Stephen Covey
- Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who
can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody
can understand. —General Colin Powell
- Great leaders are not defined by the absence of
weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths. —John Zenger
- He who has great power should use it lightly. —Seneca
- He who has learned how to obey will know how to
command. —Solon
- I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership
sometimes is and how heroic followership can be. —Warren Bennis
- I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can
give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.
—Herbert Swope
- If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally
transform one million realities. —Maya Angelou
- If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead
and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the
writing. —Benjamin Franklin
- If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn
more, do more and become more, you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams
- In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters
of principle, stand like a rock. —Thomas Jefferson
- It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot
rule himself. —Latin Proverb
- It is better to lead from behind and to put others in
front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You
take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your
leadership. —Nelson Mandela
- Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and
manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.
—Ross Perot
- Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made
just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll
have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. —Vince Lombardi
- Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but
far enough ahead to motivate them. —John C. Maxwell
- Leadership and learning are indispensable to each
other. —John F. Kennedy
- Leadership cannot just go along to get along.
Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day. —Jesse Jackson
- Leadership does not always wear the harness of
compromise. —Woodrow Wilson
- Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and
character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
—Norman Schwarzkopf
- Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop
bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They
have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not
care. Either case is a failure of leadership. —Colin Powell
- Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful
efforts. —Erskine Bowles
- Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become
better. —Bill Bradley
- Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership
is about nurturing and enhancing. —Tom Peters
- Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of
success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the
right wall. —Stephen Covey
- Never give an order that can’t be obeyed. —General
Douglas MacArthur
- No man is good enough to govern another man without
that other’s consent. —Abraham Lincoln
- What you do has far greater impact than what you say.
—Stephen Covey
- Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the
flock to fly and follow. —Chinese Proverb
- One of the tests of leadership is the ability to
recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. —Arnold Glasow
- The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him
in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on. —Walter Lippman
- The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing
people around a shared vision. —Ken Blanchard
- The growth and development of people is the highest
calling of leadership. —Harvey Firestone
- To do great things is difficult; but to command great
things is more difficult. —Friedrich Nietzsche
- To have long term success as a coach or in any position
of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. —Pat Riley
- True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In
ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they
are pledged to do and doing it well. —Bill Owens
- We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But
leadership has never been about popularity. —Marco Rubio
- Whatever you are, be a good one. —Abraham Lincoln
- You gain strength, courage and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do
the thing you think you cannot do. —Eleanor Roosevelt
- A competent leader can get efficient service from poor
troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best
of troops. —John J Pershing
- A good leader is a person who takes a little more than
his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.
—John Maxwell
- There are three essentials to leadership: humility,
clarity and courage. —Fuchan Yuan
- I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is
considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.
—Dee Dee Myers
- A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.
—Stephen King
- My responsibility is getting all my players playing for
the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back. –Unknown
- A good plan violently executed now is better than a
perfect plan executed next week. –George Patton
- The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. –Dwight
Eisenhower
- You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s
assault, not leadership. –Dwight Eisenhower
- Earn your leadership every day. –Michael Jordan
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