Quotes about leadership

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.

— John Adair

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.

— Ken Adelman

Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.

— Aeschylus

Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively.

— Norman Allen

The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dare to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.

— Marian Anderson

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

— St. Augustine

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

— Rabbi Ben Azai

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

— Joel A. Barker

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

— Joe Batten

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

— Warren Bennis

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

— Warren Bennis

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

— Warren Bennis

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

— Warren Bennis

If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

— Bible

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.

— Larry Bird

A leader is a dealer in hope.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Men are lead by trifles.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.

— Bertolt Brecht

When we think we lead we are most led.

— Lord Byron

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

— Mark Caine

Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.

— Thomas Carlyle

Tis a dainty thing to command, though 'twere but a flock of sheep.

— Miguel De Cervantes

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

— Winston Churchill

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

— Winston Churchill

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

— Confucius

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

— James Crook

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

— Max Depree

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

— Denis Diderot

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

— Diogenes of Sinope

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli

The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd.

— R. S. Donnell

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

— Peter F. Drucker

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.

— Peter F. Drucker

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.

— Wayne Dyer

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.

— Havelock Ellis

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Roger Enrico

A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under.

— Sam Ervin

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

— Bergen Evans

A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.

— Russell H. Ewing

Right or wrong, the customer is always right.

— Marshall Field

Who has not served cannot command.

— John Florio

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...

— B. C. Forbes

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

— Henry Ford

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

— R. Buckminster Fuller

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.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— Mahatma Gandhi

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

— Harold S. Geneen

There are no office hours for leaders.

— Cardinal J. Gibbons

A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.

— Arnold H. Glasgow

Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

— Lewis Grizzard

The leader seeks to communicate his vision to his followers. He captures their attention with his optimistic intuition of possible solutions to their needs. He influences them by the dynamism of his faith. He demonstrates confidence that the challenge can be met, the need resolved, the crisis overcome.

— John Haggai

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

— Robert Half

Those who can command themselves command others.

— William Hazlitt

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

— Edward Hennessy

There is great force hidden in a gentle command.

— George Herbert

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

— Theodore M. Hesburgh

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

— Herbert Clark Hoover

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.

— James Humes

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.

— Hubert H. Humphrey

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

— Lee Iacocca

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.

— Elliott Jaques

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

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Morale is faith in the man at the top.

— Albert Sidney Johnston

Leaders are readers.

— Charles ''Tremendous'' Jones

Keep cool and you will command everyone.

— Justinian

It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.

— John F. Kennedy

The highest of distinctions is service to others.

— King George VI

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

— Henry Kissinger

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

— Henry Kissinger

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

— Henry Kissinger

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

— John Knox

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

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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.

— Tom Landry

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

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

— Lao-Tzu

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

To lead people walk behind them.

— Lao-Tzu

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

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

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.

— Lewis H. Lapham

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

— Ralph Lauren

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

— Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

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

— Robert Lindner

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.

— Walter Lippmann

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

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.

— Vince Lombardi

Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

— Vince Lombardi