Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

- Peters, Thomas J.

Best Quotes about Leadership

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

I don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

Nixon, Richard M.

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.

Adelman, Ken

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

Townsend, Robert

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

Schwarzkopf, Norman

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

Naisbitt, John

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

The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dare to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.

Anderson, Marian

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

Kissinger, Henry

10.

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

11.

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

Townsend, Robert

12.

The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and F?hrer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.

Jung, Carl

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

The wealth of kings is in the affections of their subjects.

Motto

15.

The person who renders loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for higher responsibilities, just as the biblical servant who multiplied the one pound given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities...

Forbes, B. C.

16.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

Gandhi, Mahatma

17.

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

Meir, Golda

18.

No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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.

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

Lombardi, Vince

21.

Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.

Bennis, Warren

22.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

23.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

24.

In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

25.

Morale is faith in the man at the top.

Johnston, Albert Sidney

26.

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

Lao-Tzu

27.

Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively.

Allen, Norman

28.

Those who can command themselves command others.

Hazlitt, William

29.

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

30.

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

Proverb, German

31.

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

32.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

Bennis, Warren

33.

Do your best to be the lead dog otherwise the view never changes.

34.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

35.

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

Iacocca, Lee

36.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Patton, George S.

37.

It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.

Pope John XXIII

38.

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

39.

Each person must decide for himself what he wants each day. As a leader, I will expose you to the options and the likely consequences of those options. I'll even share my opinion if asked, but I'll never confuse it with the opinion, which simply doesn't exist.

Dyer, Wayne

40.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

41.

He is the richest man who enriches his country most; in whom the people feel richest and proudest; who gives himself with his money; who opens the doors of opportunity widest to those about him; who is ears to the deaf; eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. Such a man makes every acre of land in his community worth more, and makes richer every man who lives near him.

Marden, Orison Swett

42.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

Stendhal, Henri B.

43.

The right man comes at the right time.

Proverb, Italian

44.

The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are. They are frank in admitting this and are willing to pay for such talents.

Parrish, Amos

45.

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

46.

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

47.

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.

Liu Shao-Ch'I

48.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

49.

The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer's place.

Marden, Orison Swett

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