Good leadership quotes can help shape leaders and those they lead. Check out our collection below.
A true leader is a symbol of success wherever they are. Leaders create a new path where there was none. They make things easier. They provide solutions to the most insurmountable challenges. It is the greatest leader who has been pivotal in changing history at different times.
Here are some of the most famous and inspiring leadership quotes that can motivate you to become a better leader. You will notice that these quotes can not only guide you to be a better leader but also a better follower. Get inspiration from these quotes or share with your friends and loved ones to make this world a better place.
Top Ten Quotes about Leadership
- Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers.
Dee Hock - The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.
Ronald Reagan - Earn your leadership every day.
Michael Jordan - The real leader has no need to lead, He is content to point the way.
Henry Miller - A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte - Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves.
Lao Tzu - Leadership is the capacity to transform vision into reality.
Warren G. Bennis - Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf - Great leaders genuinely care for and love the people they lead more than they love leading itself. Leadership without love degenerates into self-serving manipulation.
Rick Warren
Having a Vision
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
Jack Welch
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
Leadership is the willingness to put oneself at risk.
John C. Maxwell
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore M. Hesburgh
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
Dennis A. Peer
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
John C. Maxwell
Check out our Michelle Obama Quotes on Leadership.
Be a Leader
If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.
Dolly Parton
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry Kissinger
A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.
Jim Rohn
Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand.
John C. Maxwell
Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
Tom Peters
Setting a New Course of Action
Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. And, the superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
William Arthur Ward
There go the people.
I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
John Buchan
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
John F. Kennedy
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
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Kenneth Blanchard
If you know of any good leadership quotes, please let us know via the Contact page. Thanks.
Notable Quotes on Leaders
Leaders are creatures of their environment, but unlike most creatures, they are also movers of it. As movers of and within the organization, they push it forward, at the same time shaping it as much as it shapes them.
John Baldoni
Leadership is action, not position.
Donald H. McGannon
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
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.
Robert Jarvik
Leadership Quotes: Being a Leader
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I like a leader who can while pointing out a mistake, bring up the good things the other person has done. If you do that, then the person sees that you have a complete picture of him. There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly.
Nelson Mandela
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says I was beaten, he does not say My men were beaten.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
Lao Tze
Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work.
Vince Lombardi (for more Vince Lombardi quotations)
The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.
Elaine Agather
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.
Oprah Winfrey – More Oprah Quotes
Success Leadership Quotes
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
Peter Drucker
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
You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
Anthony J. D’Angelo
Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.
Reed Markham
A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.
Leroy Eimes
Famous Leaders Quotes
Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.
Margaret Thatcher
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
President Theodore Roosevelt
I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep.
Charles Maurice
A leader has to appear consistent. That doesn’t mean he has to be consistent.
James Callahan
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas J. Watson
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Tony Blair
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 Truman
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Benjamin Disraeli
— Mike O’Halloran
Mike was previously President of Magnetic Poetry and is now editor of Greeting Card Poet.
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