Leadership Quotes That Will Inspire You To Be Great

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.” (Stephen Covey)
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping
stones to success.” (Dale Carnegie)
“Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” (Dianne
Feinstein)
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate
competitive advantage.” (Jack Welch)
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” (Bill
Gates)
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll
do things differently.” (Warren Buffett)
“Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people
believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” (Sam Walton)
“One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you
are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this
company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.” (Ginni Rometty)
“Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming
their efforts at a certain goal.” (Walt Disney)
“Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m
your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you.” (Ben Roethlisberger)
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” (Peter F. Drucker)
“You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” (Henry Ford)
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” (Steve Jobs)
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince
Lombardi, legendary Green Bay Packers coach
“True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly
expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” (Sheryl Sandberg)
“To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed
in some way.” (Pat Riley)
“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves
already: we have the power to imagine better.” – J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series
“Each group and each youngster is different. As a leader or coach, you get to know what they
need.” – Mike Krzyzewski, Duke basketball coach
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible
situations.” – Chuck Swindoll, Christian pastor and radio preacher
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” –
Michael Jordan, Hall of Fame basketball superstar

“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” – Max Lucado,
Christian author and preacher
“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” – Mother Teresa,
Catholic nun and saint
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt,
former first lady of the United States
“Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks, civil rights activist
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground”. – Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S.
President
“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react.
If you’re in control, they’re in control.” – Tom Landry, former Dallas Cowboys coach
“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, former U.S. President
“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be
silent.” – Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
“A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.” – Joe
DiMaggio, former New York Yankees outfielder & Hall of Fame Baseball Player
“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not
been.” ― Henry Kissinger, former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and
doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary
of State
“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, former first lady of the United
States
“To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow
someone who doesn’t know where he is going.” – Joe Namath, former New York Jets
quarterback
“If you don’t believe in yourself, why is anyone else going to believe in you.” – Tom Brady, New
England Patriots quarterback
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” – Malala Yousafzai,
activist
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are
a leader.” – President John Quincy Adams, former U.S. President
“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”– Woodrow Wilson, former U.S.
President
“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a
lion.” – Alexander the Great, former king of Macedonia
“In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous,
skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” – Harry Truman, former
U.S. President
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
– President Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. President
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
– Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy, former U.S.
President
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther
King Jr., civil rights activist
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with
people.” – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian independence movement leader
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, French military leader and emperor
“If ‘leadership’ has come to be known as something much bigger than us, aligned to changing
the world, then we are spending way too much time celebrating things that hardly anyone can
do and not celebrating things we can do every day.”- Drew Dudley, founder of Day One
Leadership

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” —Thomas
Jefferson, Founding Father and former U.S. President
“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, economist and diplomat
“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, former President of South Africa
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones
we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama, former U.S.
President
“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, former Prime Minister of
India
“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” – Tony Blair, former Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom
“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, former
U.S. President
“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, former
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
“There is a troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow;
but had rather a thing were never done, than not done their own way, tho’ other ways very
desirable.” – William Penn, early Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania
“I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good
leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal.” – Ben Carson, U.S. Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain, writer
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people
will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou, poet and civil rights activist
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein,
physicist
“Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s
lives.” – Michelle Obama, former First Lady of the United States
“I learned that things are never as complicated as we imagine them to be. It is only our
arrogance which seeks to find complicated answers to simple problems.” – Muhammad Yunus,
Nobel Peace Prize Winner
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle, Greek
philosopher
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph
Waldo Emerson, poet and essayist
“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we
must be truthful.” – Edward R. Murrow, American broadcast journalist
“To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their
existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!'” – Lao
Tzu, Chinese philosopher
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Leonardo da Vinci, scientist, artist, astronomer, and
mathematician
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart,
American aviation pioneer
“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and
become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” – Dolly Parton, singer and songwriter
“The best is he who calls men to the best. And those who heed the call are also blessed. But
worthless who call not, heed not, but rest.” – Hesiod, 8th Century BC Greek poet
“High sentiments always win in the end, 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, author and journalist
“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.” – Niccolò Machiavelli, philosopher
and writer
“If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization
gets pulled up with you.” – Indra Nooyi, Pepsi CEO