85 Best Leadership Quotes That Will Highly Inspire You
If you are striving to become a great leader, I think that the inspirational Leadership Quotes, I am going to share with you, will highly inspire and motivate you to discover what the characteristics of a great leader are.
Leadership means ‘the action of leading a group of people or an organization’ according to The New Oxford Dictionary of English.
The question that should be asked: What makes a great leader? In fact, there are leaders in many different domains such as in business, politics, sports, religion, motivation and more domains in life.
You will really find the answer of ‘what makes a great leader?’ in the below wonderful list of Leadership Quotes, which will reveal what does it mean to be a great leader.
I hope that these powerful Leadership Quotes will be a great source of inspiration and motivation for you. I also hope that you will find out what kind of attitude and thinking you should have to be a great leader in your domain or in life in general after reading these inspirational Leadership Quotes.
85 Great Leadership Quotes
1. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”- Eleanor Roosevelt
2. “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
3. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”- Henry David Thoreau
4. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”- Thomas Edison
5. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”- Dr. Seuss
6. “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams
7. “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.” – Michelangelo
8. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
9. “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” – John Hume
10. “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”- Walt Disney
11. “Leadership should be focused on extending the ladder of opportunity for everyone.” – Justin Trudeau
12. “In order to remain relevant, you must establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.”- Marc Benioff
13. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
14. “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” – Thomas Paine
15th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato
16. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
17. “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment and it comes with plenty of failure along the way.” – Barack Obama
18. “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” – Thomas Jefferson
19. “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
20. “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.” – Margaret Thatcher
21. “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” – Dalai Lama
22. “A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.” – Jack Ma
23th of 85 Motivational Quotes
“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” – Mother Teresa
24. “It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.” – Queen Elizabeth II
25. “Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion.” – Oprah Winfrey
26. “Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.” – Melinda Gates
27. “Find the smartest people you can and surround yourself with them.” – Marissa Meyer
28. “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.” – Brad Szollose
29. “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 C. Maxwell
30th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.” – Bill Clinton
31. “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
32. “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.”- Dianne Feinstein
33. “More leaders have been made by accident, circumstance, sheer grit, or will than have been made by all the leadership courses put together.” – Warren Bennis
34. “Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.” – John Gardner
35. “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
36. “Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy.” – Paul Polman
37. “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
38. “Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.” – Max De Pree
39. “Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility.” – Stanley McChrystal
40. “Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.” – Diogenes
41. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
42. “Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” – Mary D. Poole
43. “Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise.” – Peter F. Drucker
44. “A leader operating in enemy territory should always project positivity and optimism.”- Naval Ravikant
45th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.” – Patrick Ness
46. “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart
47. “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” – Adlai Stevenson
48. “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” – J.P. Morgan
49. “Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.” – George Patton
50. “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”- Warren Bennis
51. “It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him. Believe you can surpass. Believe you can go beyond. Those who harbor the second-best attitude are invariably second-best doers.”- David J. Schwartz
52nd of 85 Inspirational Quotes
“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
53. “Leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory.” – Jocko Willink
54. “Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.” – Warren Bennis
55. “The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” – Henry Kissinger
56. “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
57. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther King Jr
58. “Leaders don’t force people to follow – they invite them on a journey.” – Charles S. Lauer
59. “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” – Thomas Sowell
60th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
61. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – Colin Powell
62. “You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.” – Travis Bradberry
63. “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” – Toni Morrison
64. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” – Publilius Syrus
65. “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” – Nelson Mandela
66. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”- Coco Chanel
67. “Earn your leadership every day.” – Michael Jordan
68. “Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.” – John Naisbitt
69. “In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” – Tina Fey
70. “Make people feel like the hero of their journey and they will do more.”- Maxime Lagacé
71. “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”- Buddha
72. “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
73. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”- Leo Tolstoy
74. “Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream.”- Peter McWilliams
75th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
76. “All leaders are readers.” – Jim Rohn
77. “To lead people, walk behind them.” – Lao Tzu
78. “The price of greatness is responsibility.”- Winston Churchill
79. “Leadership distilled down to 3 words: Make a difference.”- Robin Sharma
80. “Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results.” – Robin Sharma
81. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
82. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
83. “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
84. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
85th of 85 Leadership Quotes
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
The powerful Leadership Quotes you have read above come to remind us of the qualities and characteristics that makes anyone a really great leader.
I hope that these quotes have brought you much inspiration to act as a real leader and strive for growth and prosperity in your career and life, and that you lead your team to achieve great success.
By applying the wisdom and tips in these great Leadership Quotes in our life, we can all practice leadership very well and inspire those who are in our environment.
Remember, a true leader is not someone who has power or high status, but rather who serves other people and adds an extra value to this world.
