Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

- Hesburgh, Theodore M.

Best Quotes about Leadership

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Seneca

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Who has not served cannot command.

Florio, John

An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than an army of lions commanded by a stag.

Proverb

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Iacocca, Lee

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

Milton, John

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

10.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

11.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

Kissinger, Henry

12.

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

13.

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

Churchill, Winston

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Patton, George S.

17.

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

18.

Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done.

Packard, Vance

19.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

Popularity is not leadership.

Marcinko, Richard

22.

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

Meir, Golda

23.

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

Naisbitt, John

24.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.

Maurois, Andre

25.

Leaders don't inflict pain -- they share pain.

Depree, Max

26.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

27.

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

Walters, J. Donald

28.

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

Miller, Henry

29.

Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable.

Taylor, Claude

30.

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.

31.

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

Townsend, Robert

32.

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

33.

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

Parker, Dorothy

34.

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.

Herbert, George

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

39.

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

Tutu, Bishop Desmond

40.

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

Half, Robert

41.

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