100 Leadership Quotes To Bring The Leader In You
These leadership quotes will bring out the leader in you.
One thing about being a leader is, that you do not have to have people directly under you. You can just be you and still influence people. Leadership doesn’t need to be loud it shouldn’t unless it is really necessary.
Note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you buy from my link I might make a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay. See the full affiliate disclosure here.
Another interesting thing about leadership is that you can be your leader.
Enjoy these leadership quotes, I hope they inspire you to be a great leader.
Editor’s Pick
- “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Jack Welch
Best Leadership Quotes
2. “You manage things; you lead people.” Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
3. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
5. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill
6. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
7. “The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.” Padmasree Warrior
8. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte
9. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” Dale Carnegie
10. “To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.” Andre Malraux
11. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” John Maxwell
12. “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.” M.D. Arnold
13. “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
14. “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” Thomas Sowell
15. “A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.” Jack Ma
16. “When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.” Napoleon Bonaparte
17. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs
18. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin
19. “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people to inspire and empower their lives.” Oprah Winfrey
20. “Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” Mary D. Poole
funny leadership quotes
21. “The question, ‘Who ought to be boss?’, is like asking, ‘Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?’ The man who can sing tenor.” Alexander den Heijer
22. “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.” Jim Collins
23. “You do not lead by hitting people over the head, that’s assault, not leadership.” Dwight Eisenhower
24. “A good manager is a person who isn’t worried about his career but rather the careers of those who work for him.” H. S. M. Burns
25. “The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.” Casey Stengel
26. “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” Adlai Stevenson
27. “Leadership is your ability to hide your panic from others.” Laozi
28. “Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” Lewis Grizzard
29. “Bad leaders are like baths they either do too much or not enough.” Vicki Halsey
30. “Money won’t make you happy but everybody wants to find out for themselves.” Zig Ziglar
Read also, Quotes About Trama
31. “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” George Bernard Shaw
32. “In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” Tina Fey
33. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” Douglas Adams
34. “Always drink upstream from the herd.” Will Rogers
35. “When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.” Guy Kawasaki
36. “First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.” A Bug’s Life
37. “What Washington needs is adult supervision.” Barack Obama
38. “Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.” Euripides
39. “Never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then, by all means, you should follow that.” George S. Patton
40. “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” Benjamin Disraeli
Leadership quotes for students
41. “As leaders, we’re not always going to do things right. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re even going to make decisions that lead to failures. We need to learn from those mistakes and continue to take risks.” Unknown
42. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” President John Quincy Adams, USA
43. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” Margaret Fuller
44. “Titles don’t make you a leader, impact does.” Unknown
45. “Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.” Mother Teresa
46. “Leadership is action, not position.” Donald H. McGannon
47. “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” Arnold Glasow
48. “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.” Aristotle
49. “Courageous leaders learn to live a consistent life of constant devotion to God in all circumstances.” Unknown
50. “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” Robert Louis Stevenson
51. “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I”. They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” Peter Drucker
52. “Great leaders care for their followers.” Unknown
53. “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela
54. “When we fail to challenge our teams, we fail to get the best out of our teams.” Unknown
55. “A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” John C. Maxwell
56. “In leadership, tasks, and relationships are tied together…The concern for the task must equal the concern for relationships. If an imbalance is present, your mission will eventually fail.” Unknown
57. “You can’t lead anyone if you can’t lead yourself!” Maxine Driscoll
58. “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” John Hume
59. “No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.” Madonna
60. “If there is no wind, row.” Latin Proverb
Bad leadership quotes
61. “You don’t necessarily need atomic bombs to destroy a nation. Politicians who value their pockets more than the life of citizens always do that every day.” IsraelmoreAyivor
62. “Bad managers don’t listen to their employees because it makes them feel insecure when they find that employees are smarter than themselves.” Unknown
63. “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing.” Warren Bennis
64. “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.” Steve Jobs
65. “Before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Unknown
66. “No party is as bad as its leaders.” Will Rogers
67. “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” George S. Patton
68. “A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” John Maxwell
69. “Great and pure thoughts cannot be deposited in minds accumulated with rubbish.” Michael Bassey Johnson.
70. “While some communities are chasing visions out, others are chasing one another away. While some leaders love breaking records, others love breaking constructed buildings. Good leaders deserve golden trophies while the gas cylinder is o.k for the bad ones!” IsraelmoreAyivor
71. “I cannot believe what you say coz I can see what you do.” Unknown
72. “In the simplest terms, a leader knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.” John Erskine
73. “A man has to make at least one bet a day, else he could be walking around lucky and never know It.” Jim Jones
74. “I think I’m a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it’s an authority that I respect.” Unknown
75. “The good people of a nation always vote a bad leader as a president in Africa.” Aboagye Williamson De-graft
76. “Never follow a follower who is following someone who has fallen. It’s why the whole world is falling apart.” Suzy Kassem
77. “No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” David Attenborough.
78. “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” General George Patton
79. “Leaders need to have a ruthless commitment to resolving relational conflict regardless of how bad it feels.” Bill Hybels
80. “When you are too embarrassed to ask for help, that’s a little knock at your door saying “you’re insecure”!” Jocko Willink.
Inspiring leadership quotes
81. “To add value to others, one must first value others.” John Maxwell
82. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Vince Lombardi
83. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” George Addair
84. “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
85. “Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” Brian Tracy
86. “The things we fear most in organizations–fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances–are the primary sources of creativity.” Margaret Wheatley
87. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” Jim Rohn
88. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” Henry Ford
89. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” Martin Luther King Jr
90. “People respond well to those that are sure of what they want.” Anna Wintour
91. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” Ayn Rand
92. “A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.” – Joe DiMaggio
93. “A leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding the potential in people and processes.” Brené Brown
94. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” Plutarch
95. “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
96. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill
97. “Make the right decision even when no one is watching, especially when no one is watching, and you will always turn out okay.” Kim Kaupe
98. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” Indira Gandhi
99. “People who are powerful lift others up. Truly powerful people bring others together.” Michelle Obama
100. “Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their bar.” Orrin Woodward
Conclusion
I hope you found whatever you were looking for in this leadership quotes list. Go forth and lead with grace.
