“Quotes On Leadership to Inspire and Reflect Upon”
Compiled from various sources, including famous-quotes-and-quotations.com,
heartquotes.net/Leadership.html, wisdomquotes.com/cat_leadership.html
and nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadqot.html,
Great necessities call forth great leaders. ~ Abigail Adams
It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse. ~ Adlai Stephenson
Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure. ~ Admiral Arleigh A. Burke
You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment. ~ Alvin Toffler
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
The only real training for leadership is leadership. ~ Anthony Jay
A good leader is not the person who does things right, but the person who finds the right things to do.
~ Anthony T. Dadovano
Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it you can make it so.
~ Belva Davis
Leaders don't force people to follow—they invite them on a journey. ~ Charles S. Lauer
Gifted leadership occurs when heart and head - feeling and thought - meet. These are the two winds that allow a leader to soar. ~-Daniel Goleman
Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps. ~ David Loyd George
Leadership is action, not position. ~ Donald H. McGannon
You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
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 leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
Whoever is providing leadership needs to be as fresh and thoughtful and reflective as possible to make the very best fight. ~ Faye Wattleton
A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. ~ George S. Patton
The future is taking shape now in our own beliefs and in the courage of our leaders. Ideas and leadership -- not natural or social 'forces' -- are the prime movers in human affairs. ~ George Roche
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions. ~ Harold Geneen
When the leadership is right and the time is right, the people can always be counted upon to follow—to the end and at all costs.
Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present, and keep the promise to posterity. ~ Harold J. Seymour
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
~ Henry Kissinger
The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way. ~ Henry Miller
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants. ~ Isaac Newton
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. ~ James Callaghan
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. ~ James Crook
Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon.
There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.
Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together. ~ Jesse Jackson
Remember that it is far better to follow well than to lead indifferently. ~ John G. Vance
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
The first step to leadership is servant-hood.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. ~ John Quincy Adams
Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration—of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine. ~ Lance Secretan
When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally. ~ Lao Tse Tung
The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ...
When the best leader's work is done the people say, "We did it ourselves!" ~ Lao Tzu
Good plans shape good decisions. That's why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. ~ Lester R. Bittel
Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint. ~ Lewis H. Lapham
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes. ~ Lewis Grizzard
And when we think we lead, we are most led. ~ Lord Byron
Good leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. ~ Manual on military leadership
When nothing is sure, everything is possible. ~ Margaret Drabble
Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing. ~ Mary D. Poole
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.
Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice. ~ Max DePree
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~ Muriel Strode
A leader is a dealer in hope. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Leaders grow; they are not made.
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
Leaders shouldn't attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can't compromise.
Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people"—that is flattery. Leadership is 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.
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~ Ralph Nader
The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.
Good leaders must first become good servants. ~ Robert Greenleaf
Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too. ~ Robert Half
Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kantor
I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.
~ Talleyrand
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. ~ Theodore M. Hesburgh
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. . . . The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully. ~ Walter Lippmann
Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people
And from the minds of unknown persons:
The best leaders ask the best questions.
Chance comes to a prepared mind.
When good people want to move mountains, mountains become molehills.
Blessed is the leader who seeks the best for those he serves.
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
A good leader inspires others with confidence in him; a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves.
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Quotes on Leadership