The Very Best Leadership Quotes!
"If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever."— G.K. Chesterton to Alexander Woollcott
"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings."— Peter Drucker
"A leader is one who influences a specific group of people to move in a God-given direction."— J. Robert Clinton
"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall."—Stephen R. Covey
"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
"The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do."— Andrew Carnegie
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."— Max DePree
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C. Clarke
"No man will ever make a great leader who wants to do it all by himself or to get all the credit for doing it" - Andrew Carnegie
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible" - Arthur C. Clarke
"Unless structure follows strategy, inefficiency results" - Alfred Chandler
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong" - Arthur C. Clarke
"You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader." - Anthony J D'Angelo
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody" - Bill Cosby
"I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" - Benjamin Disraeli
"Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it" -Benjamin Disraeli
"The depositary of power is always unpopular" - Benjamin Disraeli
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches but to reveal to them their own" - Benjamin Disraeli
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Confucius
"A superior man is one who is free from fear and anxieties" - Confucius
"Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast" - Charles Dickens
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand" -Confucius
"No person was ever honored for what they received. Honor has been the reward for what they gave" - Calvin Coolidge
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall" -Confucius
"There are two kinds of men who never amount to much - those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else" - Cyrus H. K. Curtis
"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right" - Confucius
"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm" - Democritus
"It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions." - Daniel Defoe
"Take a chance! All life is a chance" - Dale Carnegie
"The man who goes the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare" -Dale Carnegie
"Without a struggle, there can be no progress" - Frederick Douglass
"A great man is one who can have power and not abuse it" - Henry L. Doherty
"There's plenty of room at the top, but there's no room to sit down" -Helen Downey
"A man who wants to lead an orchestra must turn his back on the crowd" - James Crook
"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch" - Jesus Christ
"The leader’s job is not to cover all the bases - it is to see that all bases are covered" - James Crupi
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to ... " - Lewis Carroll
"The most important part of every business is to know what ought to be done" -Lucius Columell
"Following the herd often leads to the slaughterhouse" - Nerella Campigotto
"He who stops being better, stops being good." - Oliver Cromwell
"Management" means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force... " -Peter Drucker
"Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two - and only two - functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs" - Peter Drucker
"Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change" - Peter Drucker
"Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation." - Peter Drucker
"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes" - Peter Drucker
"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from" - Peter Ducker
"In today's economy, the most important resource is no longer labor, capital or land; it is knowledge" - Peter Drucker
"It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Leadership is not a 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 high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." - Peter Drucker
"Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't" - Peter Drucker
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things" -Peter Drucker
"No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective" - Peter Drucker
"Only the bold get to the top" - Publius Syrus
"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work" -Peter Drucker
"Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable" - Peter Drucker
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work" - Peter Drucker
"The best way to predict the future is to create it" - Peter Drucker
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all" - Peter Drucker
"Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed" - Peter Drucker
"Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans" -Peter Drucker
"Whenever anything is…being done, I have learned, it is being done by a monomaniac with a mission" - Peter Drucker
"It's no good running a pig farm for 30 years while saying 'I was meant to be a dancer.' By that time, pigs are your style" - Quentin Crisp
"A leader takes people where they want to go ... a great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be" -Rosalynn Carter
"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out" - Stephen R. Covey
"How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most." - Stephen R Covey
"Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things" - Steven Covey
"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall" - Stephen R. Covey
"Nothing great was ever done without much enduring" - St Catherine of Siena
"Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them" - Stephen Covey
"Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so" - Thomas Carlyle
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" - Winston Churchill
"A man should never neglect his family for business." - Walt Disney
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" - Winston Churchill
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential" - Winston Churchill
"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict" - William Ellery Channing
"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world." - Walt Disney
"I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter" - Walt Disney
"I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught" -Winston Churchill
"I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and then chew it" - William DeMille
"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it." - Walt Disney
"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse" - Walt Disney
"It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world" - William Corbett
"It is no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary" - Winston Churchill
"It's never crowded along the extra mile" - Wayne Dyer
"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened" - Winston Churchill
"Of the talents bestowed on men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory" -Winston Churchill
"Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings" - Walt Disney
"Profit in business comes from repeat customers" - W. Edwards Deming
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter" - Winston Churchill
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind" - Winston Churchill
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" -Winston Churchill
"The price of greatness is responsibility" - Winston Churchill
"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and at the bottom of the Spanish Main ... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life." - Walt Disney
"When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. And one thing it takes to accomplish something is courage." - Walt Disney
"Whenever I go on a ride, I'm always thinking of what's wrong with the thing and how it can be improved" - Walt Disney
"You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them" - Walt Disney
"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already."— John Buchan
"Four rules of leadership in a free legislative body:First, no matter how hard-fought the issue, never get personal. Don't say or do anything that may come back to haunt you on another issue, another day....Second, do your homework. You can't lead without knowing what you're talking about....Third, the American legislative process is one of give and take. Use your power as a leader to persuade, not intimidate....Fourth, be considerate of the needs of your colleagues, even if they're at the bottom of the totem pole...."— George Bush
"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Our is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living" - General Omar Nelson Bradley
"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not" -Lucille Ball
"True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be " -William R. Alger
"I think leadership comes from integrity - that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity."— Scott Berkun
"A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected" - Arnold Bennett
"Change in all things is sweet" - Aristotle
"Dissatisfaction and discouragement are not caused by the absence of things but the absence of vision" - Anonymous
"If an incompetent chieftain is removed, seldom do we appoint his highest-ranking subordinate to his place" - Attila the Hun
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito" -Anonymous
"Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others" - Anonymous
"Praise works with only three types of people; men, women, and children" -Anonymous
"Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determination" -Anonymous
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects the wind; the realist adjusts the sails" - Anonymous
"There’s never just one wet butt in a canoe. We’re all in this together" -Anonymous
"What you rub up against rubs off" - Anonymous
"When one door closes another one opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us" -Alexander Graham Bell
"You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event - it is a habit" -Aristotle
"You have to find it ... no one else can find it for you" - Bjorn Borg
"Forget about yourself and just think of your people. It's always the people who make things happen" - Corazon Aquino
"In a community all acts of individuals and of organizations are directly or indirectly interconnected and interdependent" - Chester Barnard
"The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funnybone and the wishbone that go with it." - Elaine Agather
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds" - Francis Bacon
"All rising to a great place is by a winding stair" - Francis Bacon
"I learned that good judgement comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes." -General Omar Nelson Bradley
"If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner" - General Omar Nelson Bradley
"The greatest leader in the world could never win a campaign unless he understood the men he had to lead." - General Omar Nelson Bradley
"We are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind or whether to act, and in acting, to live" - General Omar Nelson Bradley
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats" -Howard Aiken
"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave" - Henry Brougham
"For success, attitude is equally as important as ability" - Harry F. Banks
"One of these days is none of these days." - H G Bohn
"Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true" -Honore de Balzac
"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." -Isaac Asimov
"If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me" - John Bunyan
"Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it" - James Truslow Adams
"Not everything that is faced can be changed; nothing can be changed until it is faced" - James Baldwin
"There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less" - Jeff Bezos
"There is no limit to the good man can do if he doesn't care who gets the credit" -Judson B. Branch
"When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either" - Leo Burnett
"Without a dream there is no reason to work...without work there is no reason to dream." - Lee Ayers
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough" -Mario Andretti
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude" -Maya Angelou
"It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis." -Margaret Bonnano
"Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it" - Marian Anderson
"Nobody can dim the light which shines from within" - Maya Angelo
"This nation has never lived without independence. We cannot and shall not live without it. Either independence or death" - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
"We must never say 'What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?' If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness" - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
"A leader is a dealer in hope" - Napoleon Bonaparte
"Adversity is the midwife of genius" - Napoleon Bonaparte
"Imagination rules the world" - Napoleon Bonaparte
"Men of genius are meteors, intended to burn to light their century" -Napoleon Bonaparte
"To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a God" -Napoleon Bonaparte
"A really great man is known by three signs - generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success" - Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck
"There has been in recent years excessive emphasis on a citizen's rights and inadequate stress upon his duties and responsibilities" - Paxton Blair
"Moving fast is not the same as going somewhere" - Robert Anthony
"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win" - Roger Bannister
"The prudent man may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates it" -Robert Bulwer-Lytton
"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income." - Samuel Butler
"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
"Failure is impossible" - Susan B. Anthony
"Independence is happiness" - Susan B. Anthony
"Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less" -Susan B. Anthony
"The lash may force men to physical labour; it cannot force them to spiritual creativity" - Sholem Ash
"The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain" - Susan B. Anthony
"When you are not practising, remember, someone somewhere is practising ... and when you meet him, he will win" - Senator Bill Bradley
"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world" -Vannevar Bush
"If you are not failing now and again, its a sign you're playing it safe" -Woody Allen
"If you wish to succeed in managing and controlling others - learn to manage and control yourself" -William J.H. Boetker
"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality" - Warren Bennis
"Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it" - Warren Bennis
"The new leader is one who commits people to action, who converts followers into leaders, and who may convert leaders into agents of change" - Warren Bennis
"You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future" - Warren Bennis
"When you pass through, no one can pin you down, no one can call you back" - Ying An
