Top 100 Leadership Quotes

1

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

2

If I had no family, my wife and I would lead a much more romantic and nomadic existence.

3

Leadership is no longer about your position. It's now more about your passion for excellence and making a difference You can lead without a title

4

Courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility

A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone ...5

A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.

6

Leaders who want to show sensitivity should listen often and long and talk short and seldom. Many so-called leaders are too busy to listen. True leaders know that time spent listening is well invested.

The cautious seldom err.7

The cautious seldom err.

8

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.

9

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.

10

A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.

11

The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb.

12

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

13

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.

Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.14

Every ruler is harsh whose laws is new.

15

We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.

16

The success of any change depends, in large measure, on your attitude about that change.

17

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

If you want it, measure it. If you can't measure it, forget it.18

If you want it, measure it. If you can't measure it, forget it.

19

And if God has given you a lot of ability, I believe you should be held to a higher level of expectation.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.20

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Most people can do absolutely awe-inspiring things. Sometimes they ...21

Most people can do absolutely awe-inspiring things. Sometimes they just need a little nudge.

22

Every generation of children offers mankind the possibility of rebuilding his ruin of a world.

23

We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.

24

America's cultural table is set by the people living in the three bubbles - New York Washington D.C. and Hollywood.

25

Finish every day and be done with it.

26

The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart.

27

Wise leaders know that if an individual doesn't count, the institution doesn't count for much either. Put mathematically, if the individual is a zero, together a lot of zeros add up to a whole lot of nothing.

28

Executives of the company must have the necessary qualities to direct the personnel by showing them the way to do things.

29

Throughout history, great leaders have known the power of humor.

30

NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

31

Too many professional development initiatives are done to teachers - not for, with or by them.

32

The most important emotion in classrooms is surprise.

33

A brainscan cannot interpret itself and neither can a data dashboard in education.

34

There is no algorithm for creativity.

35

The Common Curriculum can easily become the karaoke curriculum, where everyone just follows the bouncing ball of the script.

36

This is why we give up on things that break our heart because it requires change.

37

Leaders love progress.

38

My kids think you are always supposed to be in a small group and lead one.

39

Two primary ways to keep volunteers motivated - Food and T-shirts.

40

I think the leadership of a company should encourage the next generation not just to follow, but to overtake.

41

Take the job or the project that scares you a little. It's the one with the most to teach you.

42

No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one.

43

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

44

Leaders need 5 core competences: soul, head, hand, heart, body. Where do you need to grow?

45

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.

46

American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves.

47

If you tell me, it's an essay. If you show me, it's a story.

48

I'll never give up on a player regardless of his ability as long as he never gives up on himself. In time he will develop.

49

We can't have two standards, one set for the dedicated young men who want to do something ambitious and one set for those who don't.

50

Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.

51

Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.

52

Sooner or later we all quote our mothers.

53

Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don't act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.

54

All lives have equal value. And so you say, 'why do poor children die when other children don't? Why do some people have enough nutrition or reasonable toilets and other people don't?' So those basic needs that, through innovation, actually it's very affordable to bring them...to everyone.

55

If geek means you're willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

56

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

57

It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setback. They are champions because they've been hurt. Their experience moved them, and they pulled out this fighting spirit, making them what they are. Sometimes in life, God gives us a difficulty in order to bring out the fighting spirit. Everything that happens to you can happen for good if you have this spirit. The essential thing in life is not in the conquering, but in the fight.

58

Strive for perfection - never be content with mediocrity. You don't win until you conquer the little flaws. You don't beat these great ones until your form is perfect. This is true in all of life. A flaw in a product can ruin a business. A personal failing, a little one, can ruin a person's life. Don't be content with mediocrity - strive to live up to the greatest within you.

59

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

60

Every time I would give a talk, someone would say, 'You ought to go into politics.' I prefer to call it government leadership. My life has taken me to places where I have experiences that I think I can share. A lot of times, we see people who are career politicians. I'm not the conventional candidate, nor do I want to be.

61

Life is all about choices. Today, show compassion for others, think powerful thoughts, and exercise self control.

62

Emotions are the glue that holds the cells of the organism together.

63

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

64

The most inspiring leaders are those who... inspire the rest of us to be our best selves and to match our skills with our passions. They give us confidence to pursue our dreams.

65

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

66

Disappointment and adversity can be catalysts for greatness. There's something particularly exciting about being the hunter, as opposed to the hunted. And that can make for powerful energy.

67

There are many reasons for why a man does what de does. To be himself he must be able to give it all. If a leader cannot give it all he cannot expect his people to give anything.

68

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

69

He was uniformly of an opinion which, though not a popular one, he was ready to aver, that the right of governing was not property, but a trust.

70

There is no mystery about successful business.... Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you.

71

The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church.

72

Remember you live in a community. You have a responsibility to be accountable to your family and your community as well as yourself.

73

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

74

Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

75

Al Qaeda is not the organization now that it was before. It is under stress organizationally. Its leadership spends more time trying to figure out how to keep from getting caught than they do trying to launch operations.

76

My responsibility, our responsibility as lucky Americans, is to try to give back to this country as much as it has given us, as we continue our American journey together.

77

You know, I've never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I'd been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I'd be still waiting.

78

I talked about the need for American leadership, I talked about the importance of the United States to a more peaceful world, a world that has been quite turbulent in recent years, and needs a strong American anchor.

79

If you lead the people with correctness, who will dare not be correct?

80

Where there is an absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.

81

Until Sammy Baugh - pro football in Texas was a one-paragraph story on the third page of the Monday sports section.

82

As much as 80% of adult "success" comes from EQ.

83

Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.

84

If you understand the independent worker, the self-employed professional, the freelancer, the e-lancer, the temp, you understand how work and business in the U.S. operate today.

85

Human beings are natural mimickers. The more youre conscious of the other sides posture, mannerisms, and word choices - and the more you subtly reflect those back - the more accurate youll be at taking their perspective.

86

Large companies are not going to disappear. Multinational companies with tens of thousands of employees are not going to disappear. In fact, many of them are getting larger because they can benefit from economies of scale.

87

In economic terms, we've always thought of work as a disutility - as something you do to get something else. Now it's increasingly a utility - something that's valuable and worthy in its own right.

88

The President's speech suggested to me that were we to follow his leadership, we will be in Iraq not for months, but for years. I also hope I am wrong on this.

89

We associate leadership with decisiveness. That perception of leadership pushes people to make decisions fairly quickly, lest they be seen as dithering and indecisive.

90

There is no 'grand conspiracy' preventing your from accomplishing what you need to do.

91

When you depend on another's perceptions to match your expectations, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

92

You can help determine your team's enthusiasm for the change by focusing on the entrance of potential while you are working through the exit of the past.

93

For you to be successful and provide your employees with the necessary tools for success, you and your boss must work together - no matter what.

94

Even though your responsibilities increase when you become a manager, you lose some of the rights or freedoms you may have enjoyed in the past.

95

You are the chief bucket filler, and the best way to fill buckets is with excellent communication.

96

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.

97

The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help.

98

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.

99

If America wants to retain its position as a global power, its president must listen to the people and show strong leadership at this turning point in human history.

100

You can't teach court savvy

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