Leadership Quotes
(90+ quotes)
Leadership quotes apply to all of us. Whether you are a student, a stay-at-home-mom, an entrepreneur, or an employee of an organization, you have leadership qualities.
Good leaders accept responsibility for their actions. They take calculated risks and make informed decisions. Great leaders set good examples and inspire confidence. They encourage and empower. Are you using your leadership abilities to make the world a better place? Pick a cause you have passion for and take action. Let these sayings about leading point you in the right direction.
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Linda Naiman
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 cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.
Stephen King Tweet this Quote!
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Tweet this Quote!
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
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
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus Tweet this Quote!
Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.
Brian Tracy
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
Jack Welch
Earn your leadership every day.
Michael Jordan Tweet this Quote!
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter F. Drucker
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Stephen R. Covey
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
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 Tweet this Quote!
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle Tweet this Quote!
I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.
Warren Bennis
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Benjamin Disraeli Tweet this Quote!
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Ralph Nader
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson Tweet this Quote!
Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
George S. Patton Tweet this Quote!
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.
Brian Tracy Tweet this Quote!
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Tweet this Quote!
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 Tweet this Quote!
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
Norman Schwarzkopf
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 F. Drucker
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 art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
Warren Bennis Tweet this Quote!
Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts.
Erskine Bowles Tweet this Quote!
Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.
Bill Bradley Tweet this Quote!
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
Tom Peters Tweet this Quote!
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen R. Covey
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
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 Bernard Montgomery
Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.
Douglas MacArthur Tweet this Quote!
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
Abraham Lincoln Tweet this Quote!
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
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasgow
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Tony Blair Tweet this Quote!
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 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
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.
Ken Blanchard Tweet this Quote!
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
Harvey Firestone Tweet this Quote!
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Ken Blanchard Tweet this Quote!
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
Warren Bennis
The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.
Winston Churchill
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Tweet this Quote!
There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage.
Fuchan Yuan Tweet this Quote!
To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
Andre Malraux Tweet this Quote!
To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche Tweet this Quote!
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 Tweet this Quote!
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Tweet this Quote!
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
You manage things; you lead people.
Grace Hopper Tweet this Quote!
A leader is someone you would follow to a pace you would not go to by yourself.
Joel Barker Tweet this Quote!
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they didn't necessarily want to go but ought to be.
Rosalynn Carter
He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.
Proverb Tweet this Quote!
It's not the position that makes the leader; it's the leader that makes the position.
Stanley Huffty Tweet this Quote!
Leadership ability determines a person's level of effectiveness.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.
Oprah Winfrey
Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation - and about fundamental relations with one's fellows.
Tom Peters
The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.
Socrates
The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.
Peter F. Drucker Tweet this Quote!
The true measure of leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
To be a leader you must be able to create positive change.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Eric Hoffer
The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller Tweet this Quote!
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
James Cook Tweet this Quote!
A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.
Daisaku Ikeda Tweet this Quote!
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
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 C. Maxwell
A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte Tweet this Quote!
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
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
Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.
Max Dupree
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.
Harold S. Geneen Tweet this Quote!
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
The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be world leaders in everything else.
Harold R. McAlindon
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
John C. Maxwell Tweet this Quote!
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
Bill Gates Tweet this Quote!
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