Positive Leadership Quotes

It takes a good leader to direct people in a company/ firm/ organization as greatest assets to a company are people working over there. Best leaders have always provided or were as an inspiration to all, weather they led a country or company. Here are some of the motivating leadership quotes by famous personalities.

1. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” - Bill Gates
2. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” - General Colin Powell
4. “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
5. “In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.” - John Erskine
6. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” - William Arthur Ward
7. “The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.” - George Orwell
8. “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” - Adlai E. Stevenson II
9. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
10. “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. “Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men-the other 999 follow women.” - Groucho Marx
12. “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
13. “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” - George Patton
14. “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
15. “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” - John F. Kennedy
16. “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” - Tina Fey
17. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” - Peter F. Drucker
18. “Power isn’t control at all-power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” - Beth Revis
19. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.” - John C. Maxwell
20. “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
21. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” - Albert Schweitzer
22. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
23. “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” - Colin Powell
24. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” - President John Quincy Adams
25. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” - John C. Maxwell
26. “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
27. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” - Robert E. Lee
28. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” - Nancy D. Solomon
29. “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.” - Brandon Sanderson
30. “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” - Tony Blair
31. “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” - Steve Jobs
32. “Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way” - Ronald Reagan
33. “A leader…is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” - Nelson Mandela
34. “Leadership is an action, not a position.” - Donald McGannon
35. “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?” - Margaret Thatcher
36. “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” - J.P. Morgan
37. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt
38. “No guts, no story.” - Chris Brady
39. “I don’t see myself being special; I just see myself having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, to have answers.” - Tupac Shakur
40. “Show me the man you honor and I will know what kind of man you are.” - Thomas John Carlisle
41. “If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.” - Henry David Thoreau
42. “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” - Peter F. Drucker
43. “The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” - Colin Powell
44. “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.” - Leroy Eimes
45. “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
46. “There is a difference between being a leader and being a boss. Both are based on authority. A boss demands blind obedience; a leader earns his authority through understanding and trust.” - Klaus Balkenhol
47. “If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.” - Tom Rath
48. “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” - Max De Pree
49. “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.” - M.D. Arnold
50. “We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.” - Whoopi Goldberg
51. “Don’t blow off another’s candle for it won’t make yours shine brighter.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu
52. “A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” - Beth Revis
53. “When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter.” - Winston Churchill
54. “Always remember, Son, the best boss is the one who bosses the least. Whether it’s cattle, or horses, or men; the least government is the best government.” - Ralph Moody
55. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” - Max Lucado
56. “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.” -Brad Szollose
57. “A leader takes people where they would never go on their own.” - Hans Finzel
58. “’Give as few orders as possible,’ his father had told him once long ago. ‘Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.’” - Frank Herbert
59. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” - Brian Tracy
60. “Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through.” - Jarod Kintz
61. “In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.” - Seth Godin
62. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
63. “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” - Patrick Lencioni
64. “Earn your leadership every day.” - Michael Jordan
65. “I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: try to please everybody.” - Herbert Bayard Swope
66. “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” - John Maxwell
67. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” - Jim Rohn
68. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” - Publilius Syrus
69. “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
70. “It is absolutely necessary…for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders.” - George Washington
71. “When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.” - Jerry Porras
72. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
73. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
74. “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” - George Patton
75. “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” - Father Theodore M. Hesburgh
76. “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people” - Indira Gandhi
77. “Success at the highest level comes down to one question: ‘Can you make the choice that your happiness can come from someone else’s success?’ No one has qualities like courage, vision, charisma, adaptability, and decisiveness in equal measure. But every great leader does make the same decision-and so can you.” - Jeff Haden
78. “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” - Ken Kesey
79. “To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.” - Pat Riley
80. “Leadership is no longer about your position. It’s now more about your passion for excellence and making a difference. You can lead without a title” - Robin Sharma
81. “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” - Ralph Nader
82. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” - John Maxwell
83. “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” - Steve Jobs
84. “Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.” - Oscar Wilde
85. “The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement” - Charles Schwab

We hope that you must have enjoyed the above insightful quotes on Leadership.