Great Quotes on Leadership

One of the more fascinating topics of life is the leaders of history and how they shaped the world.

Here are some great and insightful thoughts on leadership.

I hope you get something helpful out of them.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

 

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt

 

To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!
Lao-Tsu

Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon

 

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
Isaac Newton

 

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
Everett Dirksen

 

Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer

 

The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill

 

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Benjamin Disraeli

 

Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.
Albert Schweitzer

 

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
John F. Kennedy

 

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

 

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert B. Swope

 

High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
George Orwell

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Kenneth Blanchard

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore M. Hesburgh

I think leadership comes from integrity – that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity.
Scott Berkun

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
Peter Drucker

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

 

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
Bill Gates

 

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

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     Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
                             Harold R. McAlindon       

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There go the people.
I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Roll

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

Men are governed only by serving them; the rule is without exception.
V. Cousin

The real leader has no need to lead--
he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller

Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.
Chinese Proverb

Be known for pleasing others, espcecially if you govern them...Ruling other has one advantage: you can do more good than anyone else.
Baltasar Gracián

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

 

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

 

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

 

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

He who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

                                                                       

"Success for leadership is . . . knowing the great art of directing others without their noticing it."
                                                      Anonymous

 
"He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander."
                                                Aristotle

"Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before."
                                           Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

 
"It's great to work with somebody who wants to do things differently."
                                          Keith Bellow

 
"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."
                                        Warren G. Bennis

" . . . power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Leadership is the wise use of this power: Transformative leadership."
                                            Warren G. Bennis

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born."
                                          Warren G. Bennis

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."
                                            Kenneth Blanchard

"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     

"In handling men, there are three feelings that a man must not possess ? fear, dislike and contempt. If he is afraid of men he cannot handle them. Neither can he influence them in his favor if he dislikes or scorns them. He must neither cringe nor sneer. He must have both self-respect and respect for others."
                                      Herbert N. Casson

"There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage."
                                      Chan Master Fuchan Yuan

"I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod."
                                     Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

"The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground."
                                    Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

"There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away."
                                   Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

"Leadership is not magnetic personality ? that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people" -- that is flattery. 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

"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 DuPree

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."
                                   General Dwight David Eisenhower

"You do not lead by hitting people over the head ? that's assault, not leadership."
                                  General David Dwight Eisenhower

"Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones."
                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
                                   Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great."
                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The common characteristics of people make a community possible, but it is their uncommon qualities that make it better."
                                       John H. Fischer

"Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned."
                                     Harold S. Green

"The human mind is as driven to understand as the body is driven to survive."
                                      Hugh Gilmore

"A salesman, like the storage battery in your car, is constantly discharging energy. Unless he is recharged at frequent intervals he soon runs dry. This is one of the greatest responsibilities of sales leadership."
                                      R. H. Grant

"What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary."
                                       Richard Harkness

"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 M. Hesburgh

"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist."
                                    Eric Hoffer

"Respect a man, he will do the more."
                                  James Howell

 Leaders think and talk about the solutions.Followers think and talk about the problems.
                                  Brian Tracy

"Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together."
                                 Jesse Jackson

"The only real training for leadership is leadership."
                                Anthony Jay

"No two men can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other."
                                  Dr. Samuel Johnson

"You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside."
                                   Charles Franklin Kettering

"Lift, Lead and Love."Spencer W. Kimball

" A leader is best
When people barely know he exists.
Not so good
When people obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they despise him.
But of a good leader
Who talks little
When his work is done,
His aim fulfilled, They will say "We did it ourselves."
                   Lao Tse

"Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish ? don't overdo it."
                    Lao Tse

"There are no dumb questions?only dumb answers."
                      Marshall Loeb

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."
                        Max Lucado

"To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less."
                        Andre Malraux

"Leadership is influence."
                       John C. Maxwell

"Leadership is an action, not a position."
                       Donald H. McGannon

"A leader is a dealer in hope."
                           Napolean I

"Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence."
                          Michael O'Brien

"The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run ever faster if encouraged."
                         Publius Ovidius Naso Ovid

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
                         General George Smith Patton, Jr.

"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you."
                             Dennis A. Peer

"No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself."
                             William Penn

Respect is the key determinant of high performance leadership.How much people respect you determines how well they perform.
                               Brian Tracy

"The same ambition can destroy or save,
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave."
                              Alexander Pope

"Leadership is the ability of a single individual through his or her actions to motivate others to higher levels of achievement."
                                F. G. ?Buck? Rodgers

"Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average. "
                                Jim Rohn

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives."
                              Theodore Roosevelt

"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 a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."
                                  General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"To lead in the 21st century-to take soldiers, sailors, and airmen into battle, you will be required to have both character and competence."
                                  General H. Norman Schwarzkop 

 "He who reads is never alone."
                 Helder Simone

"Learn to obey before you command."
                   Solon

"I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep."
                 Charles Maurice de Talleyrand--P?rigord

"Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable."
                Claude I. Taylor

"Consensus is the negation of leadership."
                 Margaret Thatcher

"It is much safer to obey, than to govern."
                     Thomas ? Kempis

"A President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a single moment."
                      Harry S. Truman

"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

"Education is the mother of leadership."
                     Wendell Lewis Wilkie

The three "C's"of leadership are Consideration,Caring,and Courtesy.Be polite to everyone.
                      Brian Tracy

"Every man who takes office . . . either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing."
                    Thomas Woodrow Wilson