Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

Best Quotes about Leadership

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

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.

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

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Seneca

The right man comes at the right time.

Proverb, Italian

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.

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

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

Townsend, Robert

No affection and a great brain, these are the people to command the world.

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

To lead people walk behind them.

Lao-Tzu

11.

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

12.

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

13.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.

Syrus, Publilius

15.

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

Tutu, Bishop Desmond

16.

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.

17.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

18.

That is no use at all. What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.

Melbourne, Lord

19.

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

20.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

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.

22.

Leadership must be established from the top down.

Nunn, Sam

23.

Morale is faith in the man at the top.

Johnston, Albert Sidney

24.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

25.

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

Iacocca, Lee

26.

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

27.

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

Schwarzkopf, Norman

28.

Leadership is action, not position.

Mcgannon, Donald H.

29.

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

30.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

31.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

32.

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.

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.

A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself.

Barker, Joel A.

35.

A crown, golden in show is but a wreath of thorns.

Milton, John

36.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

37.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

38.

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

39.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

Augustine, St.

40.

Men are lead by trifles.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

42.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

43.

When the leadership is right and the time is right, the people can always be counted upon to follow -- to the end at all costs.

Seymour, Harold J.

44.

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

Daniel Akst

45.

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

Proverb, French

46.

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

Marx, Groucho

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

Rohn, Jim

50.

Keep cool and you will command everyone.

Justinian