Leadership quotes, what exact words do you think can ignite you or keep the fire burning in you to achieve success? What leadership quote can truly inspire others around you to keep working and get them fired up to achieve a lot more?
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Today, I will be sharing with you, the top 100 most powerful leadership quotes to inspire you, transform you, and which you can use to get others around you inspired to achieve more.
Take note that these quotes are drawn from Forbes, INC, Dailyschoolnews, and some of the greatest sites in the world.
What are Leadership Quotes?
Everything starts with words spoken out, either for good or bad. History has shown that the greatest leaders are those who have the ability to speak the right word at the right time.
I am of the school of thought that the most powerful and meaningful things come from words, and not just ordinary words, but words capable of touching our hearts and leading us to see our potential.
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Life is about discovering ourselves, and being a leader means there is a need to strive and become better than we already are. The ability to help everyone around us to become better too.
I hope that these Leadership quotes not only inspire you but also motivate you, encourage you and empower you to be your best version yet.
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100 Most Valuable Leadership Quotes of All Time.
My job as a leader is to make sure everyone in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact. – Larry Page.
There is a difference between leading and rallying, you can rally people by stroking their fears, but leadership is about inspiring people with hope. – Simon Sinek.
Your love makes me strong, your hate makes me unstoppable. – Cristiano Ronaldo.
We can’t live with being obsessed with what others think about us, it’s truly impossible to live like that, not even God almighty managed to please the entire world. – Cristiano Ronaldo.
If you don’t follow yourself, why should anyone else? – Brian Tracy.
Most times, we are what we pretend to be, so we must ensure that we’re careful about what we pretend to be. – Kurt Vonnegut.
The goal is not to be perfect at the end, the goal is to be better today than you were yesterday. – Simon.
A leader’s task is to get their people from where they are, to where they have never been. – Henry Kissinger.
You are not here on earth just to make a living. You are here to help 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 only impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. – Woodrow Wilson.
The art of communication is the language of leadership.
I know I am a good professional, I know that no one’s harder on me than myself, and that is never going to change, under any circumstances. – Cristiano Ronaldo.
The difference between a good and great leader is that a good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them. – M. D. Arnold.
Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you. – Margaret Thatcher (British Iron-lady).
Leadership can be defined as the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. – Seth Godin.
The greatest leader does not necessarily do the greatest things. But a person capable of getting the people to do the greatest things. – Ronald Reagan.
Always remember this, every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership. – James Humes.
To add value to others and their lives, you must first, value others. – John Maxwell.
The greatest leader is one who 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.
Endeavor to treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
I suppose that at a certain time, leadership meant muscles, but today, it means getting along with people. – Mahatma Gandhi.
There are no office hours for leaders. Every time is office hours. – Cardinal J. Gibbons.
When people talk, listen completely. This is what makes you a great leader. – Ernest Hemingway.
My personal six-word formula for success is this: Think things through – then follow through. – Edward Rickenbacker.
One of the greatest tests of true leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. – Arnold Glasow.
To be able to give up at any given moment all that we are for what we can become. This is leadership. – DeSeaux.
The quality of a leader is easily reflected in the standards they set for themselves. – Ray Kroc.
You can do what you feel in your heart to be right because you’ll be criticized anyway. – Eleanor Roosevelt.
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can surely give you the formula for failure, which is: Trying to please everybody. – Herbert Swope.
True leadership lies in the ability to guide others to success. The ability to ensure everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do, and doing it well. – Bill Owens.
Becoming a leader is the same as becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult. – Warren Bennis.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it. – David Star Jordan.
Don’t get it wrong, control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is simply, leadership. If you seek to lead, ensure you invest at least 50 percent of your time in leading yourself, your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20 percent leading those with authority over you and 15 percent leading your peers. – Dee Hock.
Leaders don’t inflict pain, they share the pain. – Max Depree.
Wise leaders always have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them. – Diogenes of Sinope.
The highest calling of leadership is this: growth and development of people. – Harvey S. Firestone.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing. – Peter F. Drucker.
The purpose and function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader.
True Leadership is having the capacity to translate vision into reality. – Warren G. Bennis.
There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier. – Charles F. Kettering.
A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself. – Joel Barker.
A good leader is someone who takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit. – Arnold Glasow.
Productive leadership is not about making amazing speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes. – Peter F. Drucker.
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. – John Maxwell.
Great leaders are always thinking and talking about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. – Brian Tracy.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The things we fear most in organizations are; Fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances, but they are the primary sources of creativity. – Margaret Wheatley.
A leader is best when people barely acknowledged his existence, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. – Lao Tzu.
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.
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. Because it is very easy to say yes. – Tony Blair.
The price of greatness is responsibility. – Winston Churchill.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. – Martin Luther King Jr.
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. – Margaret Fuller.
The highest distinctions of all time are service to others. – King George VI.
If you’re not sure where you are going, there is a huge possibility to end up someplace else. – Robert F. Mager.
Anyone is capable of holding the helm when the sea is calm. – Publilius Syrus.
To be a trustworthy leader, ensure you become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position. – Brian Tracy.
You manage things; you lead people. – Grace Murray Hopper.
A great person always attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
Don’t complicate it, leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. Leadership is about one life influencing another. – John C. Maxwell.
Always know this, people always buy into the leader first, before they buy into the vision. – John C. Maxwell.
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. But when you become a leader, your success is all about growing others. – Jack Welch.
Leadership is having the ability to lift 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.
Doing what is right isn’t the problem. The problem is knowing what is right. – Lyndon B Johnson.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill.
Bury your fears deep in you, but share your courage with others. – Robert Louis Stevenson.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it, the choice is yours. – Edith Wharton.
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail there. – Harold R. McAlindon.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. But the great teacher inspires. – William Arthur Ward.
I believed that leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. This is the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal or any goal. – Vince Lombardi.
It’s impossible to see a great leader who wants to do it all himself or to get all the credit for doing it. – Andrew Carnegie.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt.
True leadership is taking people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go. – Jeanette Rankin.
Leadership and learning are absolutely necessary to each other. – John F. Kennedy.
The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them. – Carlos Ghosn.
Real leaders recognize and know that they serve the people that they lead. – Pete Hoekstra.
Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; But truly great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar. – Orrin Woodward.
To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is much more difficult. – Friedrich Nietzsche.
Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want. – Dianne Feinstein.
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. – Stephen Covey.
All of the great leaders always have 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 spirit of leadership. – John Kenneth Galbraith.
The function of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to extract it, for the greatness is already there. – John Buchan.
Great leadership is not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths. – John Zenger.
Great leaders are almost all the time, great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can easily understand and agree with. – Colin Powell.
A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, A true leader is someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs. – Robert Townsend.
“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. – Harold Geneen.
Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone’s following you. – Henry Gilmer.
Leadership is not all about having a magnetic personality, there’s no difference as a glib tongue.Leadership is not all about making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery.Leadership is ALL ABOUT 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. That is leadership. – Peter F. Drucker.
Innovation discerns between a leader and a follower. – Steve Jobs.
A leader is someone who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see. – Leroy Eimes.
Don’t be afraid to always give up the good to go for the great. – John D. Rockefeller.
Leadership is all about unlocking people’s potential to become better. – Bill Bradley.
The greatest leaders mobilize others by merging people around a shared vision. – Ken Blanchard.
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. – Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The purpose of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader.
Earn your leadership every day. – Michael Jordan.
In the next century, leaders will be people who empower others. – Bill Gates.
You cannot be a leader, and simply ask other people to follow you, a true leader knows how to follow, too. – Sam Rayburn.
The people who let things happen, usually lose to those who make things happen. – Dave Weinbaum.
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt.
Almost all men are capable of standing adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. – Abraham Lincoln.
Leadership is an ever-evolving position. – Mike Krzyzewski.
The most effective way to lead is to lead from within. – Unknown.
You can always get in life what you have the courage to ask for. – Nancy D. Solomon.
Leadership is an action, not a position. – Donald McGannon.
Great leaders do not tell people how to do things. They tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. – George S. Patton Jr.
Whatever you are, always choose to be a good one. – Abraham Lincoln.
