Motivational Quotes

Leadership

The highest of distinctions is service to others.

- King George VI

Best Quotes about Leadership

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.

Right or wrong, the customer is always right.

Field, Marshall

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Townsend, Robert

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

Lukas, Wayne

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

Will, George F.

Leaders are readers.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

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

Stendhal, Henri B.

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.

10.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

11.

Morale is faith in the man at the top.

Johnston, Albert Sidney

12.

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.

Lombardi, Vince

13.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

14.

We will make them think it's their idea. That's how all great leaders fool people.

Laura Preble

15.

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

Marx, Groucho

16.

An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Popularity is not leadership.

Marcinko, Richard

18.

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

Batten, Joe

19.

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

20.

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

Adelman, Ken

21.

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

22.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

23.

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

24.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

The world of the 90s and beyond will belong to managers or those who make the numbers dance, as we used to say, or those who are conversant with all the business jargon we used to sound smart. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders -- people who not only have an enormous amount of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

Welch, John

30.

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

31.

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

George Goethals

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Schorr, James

35.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Lee Iacocca

36.

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Bennis, Warren

37.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Parker, Dorothy

39.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

40.

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

Bennis, Warren

41.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

42.

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

43.

The person who has no enemies has no followers.

Piatt, Don

44.

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

45.

The right man comes at the right time.

Proverb, Italian

46.

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

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

47.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

48.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

Geneen, Harold S.

49.

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

Patton, George S.

50.

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.