Motivational Quotes

Leadership

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

- Peter Drucker

Best Quotes about Leadership

Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader.

Newcomb, Arthur W.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

Lippmann, Walter

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

Milton, John

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

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

Hennessy, Edward

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

Parker, Dorothy

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Naisbitt, John

10.

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

Bennis, Warren

11.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

12.

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

13.

The person who has no enemies has no followers.

Piatt, Don

14.

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

Ford, Henry

15.

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

Saying, Zen

16.

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

Walters, J. Donald

17.

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.

Landry, Tom

18.

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

Marx, Groucho

19.

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

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

Those who can command themselves command others.

Hazlitt, William

25.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

26.

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.

27.

Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate towards some goal which they come to find desirable and which motivates them over the long haul.

Tead, Orway

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Iacocca, Lee

31.

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

Patton, George S.

32.

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

33.

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

Tutu, Bishop Desmond

34.

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

Confucius

35.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

36.

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

Daniel Akst

37.

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

Laura Preble

38.

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

39.

Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate.

Ward, William A.

40.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

41.

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

Hesburgh, Theodore M.

42.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Lee Iacocca

43.

One secret of leadership is that the mind of a leader never turns off. Leaders even when they are sightseers or spectators, are active; not passive observers.

Humes, James

44.

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

45.

Impatience is the cause of most of our irregularities and extravagances Command by obeying.

Motto

46.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

48.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Diderot, Denis

49.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

Peters, Thomas J.

50.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim