Motivational Quotes

Leadership

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

- Diogenes of Sinope

Best Quotes about Leadership

Great leaders understand human behavior rather than the cybernetics of any function.

Schorr, James

Keep cool and you will command everyone.

Justinian

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

Townsend, Robert

When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who follow.

Proverb, French

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 leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.

Lombardi, Vince

The chief executive who knows his strengths and weaknesses as a leader is likely to be far more effective than the one who remains blind to them. He also is on the road to humility -- that priceless attitude of openness to life that can help a manager absorb mistakes, failures, or personal shortcomings.

Adair, John

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

Thatcher, Margaret

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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.

11.

Leadership is action, not position.

Mcgannon, Donald H.

12.

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

Walters, J. Donald

13.

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

Knox, John

14.

Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.

Syrus, Publilius

15.

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

16.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Updike, John

17.

If you have fear of those that command you, spare those that obey you.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

18.

If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

19.

The leader seeks to communicate his vision to his followers. He captures their attention with his optimistic intuition of possible solutions to their needs. He influences them by the dynamism of his faith. He demonstrates confidence that the challenge can be met, the need resolved, the crisis overcome.

Haggai, John

20.

Men are lead by trifles.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, We did it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

22.

When we think we lead we are most led.

Byron, Lord

23.

The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears, and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

Orwell, George

24.

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

Oech, Roger Von

25.

The well being of the people is the supreme law.

26.

Right or wrong, the customer is always right.

Field, Marshall

27.

Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.

Carlyle, Thomas

28.

Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.

Marcos, Ferdinand E.

29.

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

30.

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

Churchill, Winston

31.

The best leaders of all, the people know not they exist. They turn to each other and say We did it ourselves.

Saying, Zen

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Adelman, Ken

38.

A prince should be slow to punish, and quick to reward.

Ovid

39.

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

Hesburgh, Theodore M.

40.

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

41.

If you lead the people with correctness, who will dare not be correct?

Confucius

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Marx, Groucho

45.

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

Patton, George S.

46.

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

47.

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.