Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

- Drucker, Peter F.

Best Quotes about Leadership

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

Keep cool and you will command everyone.

Justinian

Perhaps in His wisdom the Almighty is trying to show us that a leader may chart the way, may point out the road to lasting peace, but that many leaders and many peoples must do the building.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Rockefeller, John D.

Leadership is not a position. You are not a leader because you have the title of manager. Leadership is something that we earn from followers on a day to day basis.

The EMS Manager Newsletter

The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.

Peters, Thomas J.

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

George Goethals

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

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.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

10.

Leadership must be established from the top down.

Nunn, Sam

11.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar.

Churchill, Winston

12.

A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.

Ervin, Sam

13.

A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Meir, Golda

14.

Education is the mother of leadership.

Willkie, Wendell L.

15.

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

16.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

Iacocca, Lee

18.

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

19.

True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.

Townsend, Robert

20.

Men are lead by trifles.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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.

Taylor, Claude

22.

Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

23.

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

24.

I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it.

Truman, Harry S

25.

Those who can command themselves command others.

Hazlitt, William

26.

When the best leader's work is done the people say, We did it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

27.

Some men must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

28.

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

29.

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

Diderot, Denis

30.

It's important for the explorer to be willing to be led astray.

Oech, Roger Von

31.

Leadership is action, not position.

Mcgannon, Donald H.

32.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Patton, George S.

33.

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

Batten, Joe

34.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.

Brecht, Bertolt

37.

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than an army of lions commanded by a stag.

Proverb

39.

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

40.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

41.

When a customer enters my store, forget me. He is king.

Wanamaker, John

42.

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.

Roosevelt, Theodore

43.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

44.

When placed in command -- take charge.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

45.

No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

46.

The penalty of leadership is loneliness.