Quotes About Leadership
Leaders serve in many different capacities. Some are in business, others are in politics, and the military is full of them. Leaders have the ability to influence others through their words and actions. Here are 56 quotes about leadership.
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1. “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
2. “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”
– John C Maxwell
3. “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
– Margaret Thatcher
4. “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
– Harry S Truman
5. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”
– Robert E Lee
6. “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”
– Rosa Parks
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7. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
– Steve Jobs
8. “The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.”
– Kenneth H Blanchard
9. “Leaders live by choice, not by accident.”
– Mark Gorman
10. “Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way”
– Ronald Reagan
11. “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”
– Henry Kissinger
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12. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
13. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
– Peter Drucker
14. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”
– Henry Ford
15. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
– Steve Jobs
16. “Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.”
– John D. Rockefeller
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17. “People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
18. “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
19. “Whatever you are be a good one.”
– Harvey Firestone
20. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.”
– Andrew Carnegie
21. “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
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22. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
23. “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
24. “You manage things: you lead people.”
– Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
25. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
– Warren Bennis
26. “A leader is a dealer in hope.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
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27. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
– Jack Welch
28. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
– John Maxwell
29. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.”
– Aristotle
30. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.”
– Brian Tracy
31. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
32. “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position”
– John Maxwell
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33. “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead an rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin
34. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
– General Dwight Eisenhower
35. “Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.”
– Brian Tracy
36. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
– Bill Gates
37. “Education is the mother of leadership.”
– Wendell Willkie
38. “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”
– Stephen Covey
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39. “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
– Abraham Lincoln
40. “Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.”
– John Zenger
41. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”
– Herbery Swope
42. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
– John Quincy Adams
43. “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
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44. “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
– Thomas Jefferson
45. “Lead and inspire people. Don’e try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.”
– Ross Perot
46. “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
47. “Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts.”
– Erskine Bowles
48. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”
– Bill Bradley
49. “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.”
– Tom Peters
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50. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
– John F. Kennedy
51. “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”
– Stephen Covey
52. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.”
– Chinese Proverb
53. “One of the test of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”
– Arnold Glasow
54. “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
55. “The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a share vision.”
– Ken Blanchard
56. “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
– Harvey Firestone
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