Motivational Quotes

Leadership

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Leadership

Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.

Schwarzkopf, Norman

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

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

Hesburgh, Theodore M.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

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

Leadership is a serving relationship that has the effect of facilitating human development.

Ward, Ted

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

Packard, Vance

13.

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

Lukas, Wayne

14.

It is a characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to the top.

Lindner, Robert

15.

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

Parker, Dorothy

16.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without'playing up'to anyone - even to himself.

Andre Malraux

17.

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

Daniel Akst

18.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

19.

The world cannot be governed without juggling.

Selden, John

20.

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

21.

A prince should be slow to punish, and quick to reward.

Ovid

22.

Leadership must be established from the top down.

Nunn, Sam

23.

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

Batten, Joe

24.

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

25.

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

Miller, Henry

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer's place.

Marden, Orison Swett

29.

Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The WORKERS are chopping their way through the jungle. The MANAGERS are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The LEADERS climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The MANAGERS shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!

30.

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

31.

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

Peter Drucker

32.

When a customer enters my store, forget me. He is king.

Wanamaker, John

33.

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

34.

Education is the mother of leadership.

Willkie, Wendell L.

35.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John F. Kennedy

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

Leaders are readers.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

39.

Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.

Bennis, Warren

40.

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

Walters, J. Donald

41.

Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

43.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got. Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players.

Bird, Larry

44.

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

Melbourne, Lord

45.

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

46.

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

Confucius

47.

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

48.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

49.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

50.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Rockefeller, John D.