Looking for inspiration? These 50 powerful quotes about great leaders will motivate you to lead with wisdom, courage, and heart in all areas of life!
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Ralph Nader
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
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
The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.
kenneth h. bLANCHARD
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.
SIMON SINEK
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.
M.D. ARNOLD
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
WARREN BENNIS
Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.
SHERYL SANDBERG
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
STEVE JOBS
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occassion.
THEODORE M. HESBURGH
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
TOM PETERS
Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.
JOHN ZENGER
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.
KEN BLANCHARD
QUOTES ABOUT great LEADERS
Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.
MATTHEW 20:26
Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave.
PROVERBS 12:24
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.
MAHATMA GANDHI
To add value to others, one must first value others.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
A leader takes people where they want to do. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.
ROSALYNN CARTER
Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence.
SHERYL SANDBERG
The price of greatness is responsibility.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The leader’s job is not to have all the ideas. It’s to create an environment where great ideas can happen.
SIMON SINEK
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
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.
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
HARVEY S. FIRESTONE
QUOTES ABOUT GREAT LEADERS
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
BILL GATES
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Leaders become great not because of their power but because of their ability to empower others.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Good leaders inspire people to have confidence in their leader. Great leaders inspire people to have confidence in themselves.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
MARGARET FULLER
Lead from the back – and let others believe they are in front.
nelson mandela
Good people see the good and bring out the best in other people.
ROY T. BENNETT
… perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who… have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.
J.K. ROWLING
A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his stregth to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.
beth revis
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
PETER DRUCKER
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
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 be without folly.
jim rohn
He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.
ARISTOTLE
Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. “Leadership qualities” are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them… True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.”
john holt
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
dwight d. eisenhower
QUOTES ABOUT GREAT LEADERS
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
albert schweitzer
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
Jesus said several times, “Come, follow me.” His was a program of “do what I do,” rather than “do what I say.” His innate brilliance would have permitted him to put on a dazzling display, but that would have left his followers far behind. He walked and worked with those he was to serve. His was not a long-distance leadership. He was not afraid of close friendships; he was not afraid that proximity to him would disappoint his followers. The leaven of true leadership cannot lift others unless we are with and serve those to be led.
SPENCER W. KIMBALL
‘Quiet leadership’ is not an oxymoron.
SUSAN CAIN
