Motivational Quotes

Leadership

The first task of a leader is to keep hope alive.

- Batten, Joe

Best Quotes about Leadership

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.

Landry, Tom

Right or wrong, the customer is always right.

Field, Marshall

Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.

Naisbitt, John

Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader.

Newcomb, Arthur W.

Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.

Parker, Dorothy

Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Seneca

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-Tzu

10.

If you want to be comfortable -- take an easy job. If you aspire to leadership, take off your coat.

11.

A leader has been defined as one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

12.

It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

13.

The highest of distinctions is service to others.

King George VI

14.

Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.

Marx, Groucho

15.

I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

Iacocca, Lee

16.

Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.

Syrus, Publilius

17.

Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.

Walton, Sam

18.

Most of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation's leaders wouldn't know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.

Lapham, Lewis H.

19.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher --a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.

20.

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Peters, Thomas J.

21.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Roosevelt, Theodore

22.

A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.

Glasgow, Arnold H.

23.

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

Churchill, Winston

24.

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time.

Perot, H. Ross

27.

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

It is the Vague and Elusive. Meet it and you will not see its head. Follow it and you will not see its back.

Lao-Tzu

29.

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

Lauren, Ralph

30.

It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.

Kennedy, John F.

31.

Leaders don't inflict pain -- they share pain.

Depree, Max

32.

Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice.

George Goethals

33.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

34.

The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says I; The leader says WE. The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says, GO; the leader says lets, GO!

Selfridge, H. Gordon

35.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Diderot, Denis

36.

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.

Tutu, Bishop Desmond

37.

A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.

Townsend, Robert

38.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

39.

Leaders create an environment which everyone has the opportunity to do work which matches his potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is provided.

Jaques, Elliott

40.

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.

Namath, Joe

41.

Leadership must be established from the top down.

Nunn, Sam

42.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

Sheehy, Gail

43.

In really good companies, you have to lead. You have to come up with big ideas and express them forcefully. I have always been encouraged -- or sometimes forced -- to confront the very natural fear of being wrong. I was constantly pushed to find out what I really thought and then to speak up. Over time, I came to see that waiting to discover which way the wind was blowing is an excellent way to learn how to be a follower.

Enrico, Roger

44.

There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led

Evans, Bergen

45.

Self-regulation will always be a challenge, but if somebody's going to be in charge, it might as well be me.

Daniel Akst

46.

Those that rule must hear and be deaf, must see and be blind.

Proverb, German

47.

A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.

Ewing, Russell H.

48.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

49.

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

50.

I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. 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-Tzu