Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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.

Best Quotes about Leadership

When the best leader's work is done the people say, We did it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

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.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

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

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.

Keep cool and you will command everyone.

Justinian

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Seneca

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.

Herbert, George

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

Bennis, Warren

10.

I'm their leader, I've got to follow them.

Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

Schwarzkopf, Norman

13.

I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it.

Truman, Harry S

14.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Lee Iacocca

15.

The successful man doesn't use others, other people use the successful man, for above all the success is of service.

Caine, Mark

16.

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

17.

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

Lindner, Robert

18.

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

19.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

21.

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

22.

I don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

Nixon, Richard M.

23.

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

Milton, John

24.

It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

25.

An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Peter Drucker

27.

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

28.

The lead dog gets the best view. The rest of the dogs view is butt ugly. Of course, the lead dog is also the first to fall into the ravine.

Saunders, Richard

29.

Outstanding leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers -- not their minds.

30.

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

31.

Right or wrong, the customer is always right.

Field, Marshall

32.

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.

33.

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!

34.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

35.

In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

36.

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

37.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

Kissinger, Henry

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

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

40.

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

Kissinger, Henry

41.

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

Barker, Joel A.

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

45.

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

Packard, Vance

46.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

47.

Leadership must be established from the top down.