Leadership Quotes:

"It will naturally be answered that it would be desirable to be both the one and the other; but as it is difficult to be both at the same time, it is much more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have to choose between the two."
-Machiavelli

For a man who, in all respects, will carry out only his proffesions of good, will be apt to be ruined amongst so many who are evil. A prince therefore who desires to maintain himself must learn to be not always good, but to be so or not as necessity may require.
-Unknown

The prince should combine the cunning of a fox with the ferocity of a lion to achieve his goals.
-McKay

Of the best rulers,
The people only know that they exist;
The next best they love and praise
The next they fear;
And the next they revile.
When they do not command the people’s faith,
Some will lose faith in them,
And then they resort to oaths!
But of the best when their task is accomplished,
their work done,
The people all remark, “We have done it ourselves.”

-Lao-Tzu

Power lasts 10 years, influence not more than a hundred.
-Korean proverb

There is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things while those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince


If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.
-Jack Welch

The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.
-Charles De Gaulle


The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and 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

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
-Bishop Desmond Tutu

The right man comes at the right time.
-Italian Proverb

Unpredictability is the greatest asset a leader can have.
-Richard M. Nixon

What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools predicted has come to pass.
-Lord Melbourne
Queen Victoria's first prime minister

The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, The Leader of the Future, (c) 1996
Leaders grow; they are not made.
-Robert K. Greenleaf

The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.
-Lance Secretan, Industry Week, 10/12/98

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.

More than anything else today, followers believe they are part of a system, a process that lacks heart. If there is one thing a leader can do to connect with followers at a human, or better still a spiritual level, it is to become engaged with them fully, to share experiences and emotions, and to set aside the processes of leadership we have learned by rote.

-Unknown

Blessed is the leader who seeks the best for those he serves.
-Peter F. Drucker

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
-Chinese proverb

An army of a thousand is easy to find, but, ah, how difficult to find a general.
-Lao Tzu

Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
-Donald H. McGannon
Leadership is action, not position.

Leadership is getting people to work for you when they are not obligated.
-Fred Smith

A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
-unknown

Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.
-Mary D. Poole

Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.
-Marian Anderson

The main characteristics of effective leadership are intelligence, integrity or loyalty, mystique, humor, discipline, courage, self sufficieny and confidence.
-James L. Fisher

Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present, and keep the promise to posterity.
-Harold J. Seymour

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
-Peter Ferdinand Drucker

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.
-Harold J. Seymour

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.
-Charles deGaulle

A good leader inspires others with confidence in him; a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves.
-Unkown

A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt


Forethought and prudence are the proper qualities of a leader.
-Tacitus

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.
-Tom Landry

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

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 feel centered and that gives their work meaning.
-Warren Bennis

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
-John F. Kennedy

No organization is stronger than the quality of its leadership, or ever extends its constituency far beyond the degree to which its leadership is representative.
-Edgar Powell

Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon.
-James L. Fisher

Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Good leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience.
-Manual on military leadership


He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.
-Chinese proverb

Leadership is action, not position.
-Donald H. McGannon

A good leader is not the person who does things right, but the person who finds the right things to do.
-Anthony T. Dadovano

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 final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
-Walter Lippmann

Great necessities call forth great leaders.
-Abigail Adams

Leaders don't force people to follow—they invite them on a journey.
-Charles S. Lauer

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
-Ralph Nader

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
-Jesse Jackson


I have to get the most energy out of a man and have discovered that it cannot be done if he hates another man. Hate blocks his energy and he isn't up to par until he eliminates it and develops a friendly feeling...(towards all his teammates.)
-Knute Rockne - Professional Football Coach

The first step to leadership is servanthood.
-John Maxwell

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
-Max DePree (The Art of Leadership)

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but doesnot make any progress.
-Alfred A. Montapert

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.
-William F. Buckley, Jr.

When you're going through hell - just keep on going!
-Winston Churchill

Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue...as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself...
-Viktor E. Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
-Henry J. Kaiser

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-Henry Ford

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
-English Proverb

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens, we have to keep going back and begin again.
-Andre Gide

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
-Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
-Erma Bombeck