Motivational Quotes

Leadership

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

- Ovid

Best Quotes about Leadership

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.

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead -- and find no one there.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

A leader has been defined as one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

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.

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

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.

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

Schwarzkopf, Norman

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.

10.

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!

11.

To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn't know where he is going.

Namath, Joe

12.

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

Depree, Max

13.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

14.

Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.

Bennis, Warren

15.

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

16.

Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Rohn, Jim

17.

The penalty of leadership is loneliness.

Robinson, H. Wheeler

18.

When we think we lead we are most led.

Byron, Lord

19.

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

Marden, Orison Swett

20.

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.

21.

If you have fear of those that command you, spare those that obey you.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

25.

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

Daniel Akst

26.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

27.

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

Hennessy, Edward

28.

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

29.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.

Townsend, Robert

31.

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.

Rohn, Jim

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

Stendhal, Henri B.

35.

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

Churchill, Winston

36.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

37.

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

Confucius

38.

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

Schorr, James

39.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Leadership is like the old galley ships. 100s are rowing, but only one (the captain) knows where they are going

41.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

Aeschylus

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

44.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John F. Kennedy

45.

The well being of the people is the supreme law.

46.

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

Newcomb, Arthur W.

47.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

Maxwell, John C.