Thoughts of Famous Leadership Quotes in English and Sayings
Leadership quotes in English serve as a rich repository of wisdom and insights from some of the most distinguished figures in history. These quotations provide both guidance and inspiration for those aspiring to take on leadership roles. They often encapsulate essential principles that are vital for effective leadership, underscoring the significance of vision, resilience, and integrity.
For example, the poignant saying "Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge" sheds light on the relational dynamics inherent in effective leadership. This perspective emphasizes that true leadership transcends mere authority; it involves nurturing and supporting team members to achieve their potential. This critical relational aspect fosters an environment where individuals feel valued and motivated, which can significantly enhance overall team performance.
By engaging with such powerful statements, individuals are encouraged to reflect on their own leadership philosophies, allowing them to cultivate unique styles that resonate with their values and the aspirations of their teams. This introspection facilitates the development of a leadership approach that prioritizes motivation and accountability, key components for fostering a cohesive and high-performing team environment.
Leadership quotes are drawn from a diverse array of sources, including historical leaders who have shaped nations, contemporary business moguls who have redefined industries, and renowned thought leaders who have contributed to our understanding of human behavior and organizational dynamics. Each quote serves as a poignant reminder of the qualities that characterize impactful leadership. By internalizing these insights, aspiring leaders can better navigate the challenges they encounter, inspire their teams, and ultimately drive positive change within their organizations.
Thought of the day Leadership
Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in is justice.
- George Goethals Thoughts
Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable. - Claude I. Taylor |
One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." Arnold Glasow" People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives. - Theodore Roosevelt |
In handling men, there are three feelings that a man must not possess - fear, dislike and contempt. If he is afraid of men he cannot handle them. Neither can he influence them in his favor if he dislikes or scorns them. He must neither cringe nor sneer. He must have both self-respect and respect for others. - Herbert N. Casson |
A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. - Douglas McCarther |
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. - Warren G. Bennis |
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 |
It's not always easy to do the right thing. But, doing the right thing makes you strong, it builds character, it forces you to make decisions based upon your beliefs and not what other people think. In life, and in business, you have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone. But, what makes you a leader is having the courage of your convictions. - Queen Latifah |
I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader. - Stephen R. Covey |
The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says "I"; The leader says "WE". The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says, "GO"; the leader says "LET'S GO!" - H. Gordon Selfridge |
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 |
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. - Woodrow Wilson |
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. - Leadership Thoughts by Warren G. Bennis |
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. - Leadership Thoughts by Dwight D. Eisenhower Download or Share * |
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. - A Quotation From Seth Godin Download or Share |
Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another. - John C. Maxwell Download or Share |
Leadership is an action, not a position. - Donald McGannon Quotation |
Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better. - Bill Bradley |
Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. - Harold Geneen |
Leadership is an ever-evolving position. - Leadership Quotes in English by Mike Krzyzewski |
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. - John F. Kennedy |
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. - Margaret Fuller |
You manage things; you lead people. - Grace Murray Hopper |
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. - Tony Blair |
Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership. - James Humes |
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing. - Peter F. Drucker |
There are no office hours for leaders. - Cardinal J. Gibbons |
Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you. - Margaret Thatcher |
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower |
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves. - Ray Kroc |
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. - Mahatma Gandhi |
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. - John Maxwell |
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. - Ralph Nader |
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit. - Arnold Glasow |
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. - Harvey S. Firestone |
Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult. - Warren Bennis |
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. - Stephen Covey |
A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs. - Robert Townsend |
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things. - Ronald Reagan |
Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead. - Pete Hoekstra |
A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself. - Joel Barker |
Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths. - John Zenger |
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. - Arnold Glasow |
The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been. - Henry Kissinger |
Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want. - Dianne Feinstein |
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. - Andrew Carnegie |
You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too. - Sam Rayburn |
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. - Steve Jobs |
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. - John Buchan |
The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them. - Carlos Ghosn |
A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see. - Leroy Eimes |
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. - Ralph Nader |
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. - Jack Welch |
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. - Martin Luther King Jr. |
To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. - Pat Riley |
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. - Bill Gates |
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. - Ken Blanchard |
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe |
You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader. - Henry Ford |
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. - Dwight D. Eisenhower |
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 |
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 F. Drucker |
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 |
Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. - Brian Tracy |
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 |
A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. - Lao Tzu |
A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them. - M. D. Arnold |
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 |
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. - Colin Powell |
Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position. - Brian Tracy |
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes. - Peter F. Drucker |
Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you. – Ben Roethlisberger |
Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar. - Orrin Woodward |
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. - Henry Kissinger |
Each group and each youngster is different. As a leader or coach, you get to know what they need. - Mike Krzyzewski |
Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them. - Diogenes of Sinope |
Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. - Sam Walton |
True leadership lies in guiding others to success - in ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. - Bill Owens |
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 |
A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. - Douglas MacArthur |
Leadership Sayings in English |
What luck for rulers that men do not think. |
Lift, Lead and Love. - Spencer W. Kimball Download or Share |
A leader is a dealer in hope. - Napolean I Download or Share |
He who reads is never alone. - Helder Simone Download or Share |
Leadership is influence. - Leadership Quotes in English by John C. Maxwell Download or Share |
Respect a man, he will do the more. - James Howell Download or Share |
Grow antennae, not horns. - Dr. James Rowland Angell Download or Share * |
Leadership is an action, not a position. - Donald H. McGannon Download or Share |
You manage things; you lead people. - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Download or Share |
Learn to obey before you command. - Solon Download or Share |
Consensus is the negation of leadership. - Margaret Thatcher |
The crowd gives the leader new strength. - Evenius |
It is much safer to obey, than to govern. - Thomas Kempis |
Education is the mother of leadership. - Wendell Lewis Wilkie |
The man whose authority is recent is always stern. - Aeschylus |
The only real training for leadership is leadership. - Anthony Jay |
There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers. - Marshall Loeb |
Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence. - Michael O'Brien |
Entrepreneurs are the forgotten heroes of America. - Ronald Reagan |
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. - Warren G. Bennis |
Eagles don't flock - you have to find them one at a time. - H. Ross Perot |
To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. - Andre Malraux |
Management is nothing more than motivating other people. - Leadership Quotes by Lee Iacocca |
Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. - Harold S. Green |
If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me! - Francois De La Rochefoucauld |
It's great to work with somebody who wants to do things differently. - Keith Bellow |
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. - Aristotle |
No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself. - William Penn |
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. - Kenneth Blanchard |
You will never be a leader unless you first learn to follow and be led. - Tiorio |
There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage. - Chan Master Fuchan Yuan |
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. - Max Lucado |
Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish, don't overdo it. - Lao Tse |
The human mind is as driven to understand as the body is driven to survive. - Hugh Gilmore |
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. - James Crook |
Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow. - Chinese Proverb |
Leadership Quotation in English |
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you. - Dennis A. Peer |
You do not lead by hitting people over the head, that's assault, not leadership. - General David Dwight Eisenhower |
The same ambition can destroy or save, And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. - Alexander Pope |
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together. - Jesse Jackson |
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. - Peter Drucker |
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in is justice. - George Goethals * |
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Muriel Strode |
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives. - Theodore Roosevelt |
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod. - Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill |
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. - Richard Harkness |
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep. - Charles Maurice de Talleyrand |
The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run ever faster if encouraged. - Publius Ovidius Naso Ovid |
No two men can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other. - Dr. Samuel Johnson |
Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve. - Toma Landry |
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done. - Dwight D. Eisenhower |
The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground. - Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill |
Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it. - Marian Anderson |
There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away. - Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill |
The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. - Eric Hoffer |
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. - General George Smith Patton, Jr. |
The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided. - Leadership Quotes by Casey Stengel |
An army of deer would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than an army of lions commanded by a stag. - Viking Proverb |
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 DuPree |
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. - General H. Norman Schwarzkopf |
The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it. - Elaine Agather |
The common characteristics of people make a community possible, but it is their uncommon qualities that make it better. - John H. Fischer |
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. - Lao-Tzu |
Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before. - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus |
Leadership Quotes List |
Leadership is the ability of a single individual through his or her actions to motivate others to higher levels of achievement. - F. G. Buck Rodgers |
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 |
A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. - Jim Rohn |
To lead in the 21st century-to take soldiers, sailors, and airmen into battle, you will be required to have both character and competence. - General H. Norman Schwarzkopf |
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. - Leadership Thoughts by Andre Malraux |
The marksman hitteth the target partly by pulling, partly by letting go. The boatsman reached the landing partly by pulling, partly by letting go. - Egyptian Proverb |
You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside. - Charles Franklin Kettering |
A President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a single moment. - Harry S. Truman |
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. - Sam Walton |
My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together. - Colin Powell |
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 |
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. - Theodore Roosevelt |
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. - Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh |
A salesman, like the storage battery in your car, is constantly discharging energy. Unless he is recharged at frequent intervals he soon runs dry. This is one of the greatest responsibilities of sales leadership. - R. H. Grant |
Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. - Harry S. Truman |
It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved. - Thomas Wolfe |
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. - Jim Rohn |