Leadership Quotes

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

John Quincy Adams

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

Leadership is defined not by the position you hold but by the people who follow you.

Charlene Li

To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn't know where he is going.

Joe Namath

When we think we lead, we are most led.

Lord Byron

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

Leadership is the willingness to put oneself at risk.

John C Maxwell

Anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.

John C Maxwell

Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations.

John C Maxwell

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

Ralph Lauren

Great leaders inspire. They maintain a hopeful attitude, even in the face of discouraging setbacks, constant criticism and abundant opposition. People don't follow discouraged leaders. They follow those who persist with hope.

Rick Warren

Good leadership is not obtained by issuing orders but by conviction and delegation--genuine leaders recognize and achieve agreement to an exciting and challenging vision.

Gerhard Zapke-Schauer

Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.

Alan Keith

A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.

Joe Dimaggio

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Life is the leader's laboratory, and exemplary leaders use it to conduct as many experiments as possible. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. Try, fail, learn. That's the leader's mantra. Leaders are learners. They learn from their failures as well as their successes, and they make it possible for others to do the same.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner

A leader...is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

Nelson Mandela

Those who command themselves, command others.

William Hazlitt

Leadership is about building people.

N . Ranganath

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Peter F Drucker

When there is danger, a good leader takes the front line; but when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back of the room.

Nelson Mandela

Leadership is not something you own and keep for yourself. It is a responsibility you are entrusted with for a period of time, and it is a duty you fulfill.

Keith D Harrell

Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream.

John C Maxwell

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

Henry Miller

The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.

Ken Blanchard

Leadership is not just one quality, but rather a blend of many qualities; and while no one individual possesses all the needed talents to go into leadership, each man can develop a combination to make him a leader.

Vince Lombardi

True leadership strengthens the followers. It is a process of teaching, setting an example, and empowering others. If you seek to lead, your ability will ultimately be measured in the successes of those around you.

David Niven

The best boss is the one who bosses the least.

Ralph Moody

He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.

John C Maxwell

Leadership is caring for the most vulnerable.

Elizabeth Cardno

If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.

Thomas Fuller

The leader continually passes on the vision to those who come around, knowing that dreams, if presented right, are contagious.

John C Maxwell

Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.

John H Zenger and Joseph Folkman

Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. If you view leadership as a bag of manipulative tricks or charismatic behaviors to advance your own personal interests, then people have every right to be cynical. But if your leadership flows first and foremost from inner character and integrity of ambition, then you can justly ask people to lend themselves to your organization and its mission.

Jim Collins

Leadership is the outward expression of our inner character.

Dick Abel

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

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

Eric Hoffer

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

John C Maxwell

Leadership is most effective when those acting in that capacity realize that their effect on others must be indirect. This indirectness means influencing others by changing yourself.

Greg Robinson and Mark Rose

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Robert E Lee

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

Seth Godin

You aren't leading unless people are following.

Ron Edmondson

Leadership is taking responsibility while others are making excuses.

John C Maxwell

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

Aristotle

Leadership is not a job, not a role one plays at work and then puts aside during the commute home in order to relax and enjoy real life. Rather, leadership is the leader's real life.

Chris Lowney

Leadership is not something you do to people, but something you do with people.

Ken Blanchard

Example is leadership.

Albert Schweitzer

Leadership is influence.

John C Maxwell

Leadership is about empathy.

Oprah Winfrey

Leadership is a conversation.

William A Adams

Leadership is solving problems.

Colin Powell

Leadership is made for service.

Jack Hyles

Earn your leadership every day.

Michael Jordan

Leadership is action, not position.

Donald McGannon

Leadership is character in action.

James Hunter

Leadership comes with consistency.

Junior Seau

Leadership is more doing than dash.

Peter Drucker

Leadership is an achievement of trust.

Peter Drucker

Leadership is the intelligent use of power.

Winston Churchill

Leadership is developed daily, not in a day.

John C Maxwell

Leadership is the ability to lift and inspire.

Paul Dietzel

Loneliness is a required course for leadership.

Elisabeth Elliot

Leadership is simple: Add value to people everyday.

Mike Krzyzewski

Don't surrender leadership of your life to your moods

Robin Sharma

Character matters; leadership descends from character.

Rush Limbaugh

Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it.

Frances Hesselbein

Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream.

John C Maxwell

Leadership comes in small acts as well as bold strokes.

Carly Fiorina

Leadership produces change. That is its primary function

John P Kotter

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.

Seth Berkley

Leadership is a choice. It's the choice not to do nothing.

Seth Godin

Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

Harold Geneen

Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.

Bill Bradley

Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership.

James Humes

Leaders inspire. They aren't assigned leadership. They command it.

Phil McGraw

The most powerful leadership tool you have is your personal example.

John Wooden

Leadership has less to do with position than it does with disposition.

John C Maxwell

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker

Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.

John Buchan

Leadership is influence. To the extent we influence others, we lead them.

Charles R Swindoll

Leadership is the bridge of integrity that connects goals, desires, and actions.

Steve Maraboli

Leadership is defined as authentic transformative energy that adds value to others

Kevin Cashman

Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.

J Donald Walters

I believe in servant leadership, and the servant always asks, 'Where am I needed most?'

Mike Pence

Leadership consists of character and strategy. If you can't have both, opt for character.

Norman Schwarzkopf

Leadership is a serving relationship that has the effect of facilitating human development

William Arthur Ward

Leadership means making people feel good.

Jean Chretien

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.

Tony Blair

You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people, and you can’t save the people if you won’t serve the people.

Cornel West