101 Leadership Quotes to help you achieve success

Leadership is a skills through which the self-driven, motivated and competent person drives a group of people in achieving the desired goals. Leadership is not ruling or having control over people. Instead, effective leadership is to inspire, motivate and get the best out of other people. Here are some of the best Leadership Quotes to help you achieve success.

Leadership Quotes

1. “Taking responsibility of failure and giving credit of success to others is biggest quality of leaders.” – Invajy

2. “A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself.” – Joel Barker

3. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

4. “Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone’s following you.” – Henry Gilmer

5. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” – Max DePree
6. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
7. “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” – Lao Tzu
8. “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” – Benjamin Disraeli
9. “You manage things; you lead people.” – Grace Murray Hopper
10. “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” – George Patton

Quotes about Leadership

11. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch
12. “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
13. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” – Peter Drucker
14. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
15. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John Maxwell
16. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.” – Brian Tracy
17. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
18. “The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.” – Winston Churchill
19. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” – Peter Drucker
20. “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.” – Warren Bennis

Leadership Quotes by famous leaders

21. “To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.” – Andre Malraux
22. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” – Aristotle
23. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” – Publilius Syrus
24. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
25. “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” – John Maxwell
26. “So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.” – Peter Drucker
27. “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” – Tony Blair
28. “Men make history and not the other way around. 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 S. Truman
29. “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” – Reverend Theodore Hesburgh
30. “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” – Kenneth Blanchard

Quotes on Leadership

31. “A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.” – Polybius
32. “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.” – John Maxwell
33. “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
34. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
35. “Leadership is influence.” – John Maxwell
36. 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
37. “When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
38. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
39. “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
40. “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.” – Ovid

Leadership Quotes

41. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – George Patton
42. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” – Bill Gates
43. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton
44. “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. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.” – Douglas MacArthur
45. “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
46. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right– for you’ll be criticized anyway.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
47. “Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.” – Donald Rumsfeld
48. “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” – Dwight Eisenhower
49. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.” – Herbert Swope
50. If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” – Maya Angelou

Leadership Quotes for aspiring new leaders

51. “Education is the mother of leadership.” – Wendell Willkie
52. Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” – Stephen Covey
53. “I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.” – Dee Dee Myers
54. “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” – Stephen King
55. “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” – George Patton
56. “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.” – Dwight Eisenhower
57. “Earn your leadership every day.” – Michael Jordan
58. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – Colin Powell
59. “Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.” – John Zenger
60. “He who has great power should use it lightly.” – Seneca

Inspiring Leadership Quotes

61. “He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.” – Solon
62. “I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.” – Warren Bennis
63. “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” – Nelson Mandela
64. “Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led.” – Ross Perot
65. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” – Thomas Jefferson
66. “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” – Vince Lombardi
67. “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” – Benjamin Franklin
68. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” – John Maxwell
69. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
70. “Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.” – Jesse Jackson

Leadership Quotes

71. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” – Max Lucado
72. “Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.” – Woodrow Wilson
73. “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.” – Abraham Lincoln
74. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” – Norman Schwarzkopf
75. “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” – Colin Powell
76. “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.” – Stephen Covey
77. “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” – Arnold Glasow
78. “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.” – Walter Lippman
79. “Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts.” – Erskine Bowles
80. “The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.” – Eric Hoffer

Best Leadership Quotes

81. “Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” – Brian Tracy
82. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” – Bill Bradley
83. “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” – Tom Peters
84. “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” – Stephen Covey
85. “Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.” – Douglas MacArthur
86. “We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.” – Marco Rubio
87. “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 Maxwell
88. “The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.” – Ken Blanchard
89. “Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln
90. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Powerful Leadership Quotes

91. “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” – Harvey Firestone
92. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
93. “To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.” – Pat Riley
94. “True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.” – Bill Owens
95. “There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage.” – Fuchan Yuan
96. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John Maxwell
97. “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
98. “Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.”– Harold Geneen
99. “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
100. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight Eisenhower
101. “A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.” – John J Pershing