Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

Best Quotes about Leadership

Leadership must be established from the top down.

Nunn, Sam

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

Tutu, Bishop Desmond

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

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

Meir, Golda

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example.

Hennessy, Edward

Men are lead by trifles.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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.

14.

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

Schorr, James

15.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

16.

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

Adelman, Ken

17.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

18.

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.

19.

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

Iacocca, Lee

20.

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

21.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

22.

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.

23.

When placed in command -- take charge.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Churchill, Winston

27.

You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

28.

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

Townsend, Robert

29.

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

Bennis, Warren

30.

The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.

Miller, Henry

31.

Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.

Half, Robert

32.

Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.

Walton, Sam

33.

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.

34.

Public sentiment is everything, with it nothing can fail, without it nothing can succeed.

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

Walters, J. Donald

37.

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

38.

To lead people walk behind them.

Lao-Tzu

39.

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

40.

Morale is faith in the man at the top.

Johnston, Albert Sidney

41.

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

Barker, Joel A.

42.

Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.

Syrus, Publilius

43.

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.

Wolfe, Thomas

44.

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

Milton, John

45.

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

46.

When we think we lead we are most led.

Byron, Lord

47.

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

Daniel Akst

48.

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

Oech, Roger Von

49.

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

50.

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

Naisbitt, John