"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
"Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." --George S. Patton Jr.
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."--Abraham Lincoln
"Those who let things happen usually lose to those who make things happen." --Dave Weinbaum
"You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too." --Sam Rayburn
"The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision." --Ken Blanchard
"Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths." --John Zenger
"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." --Peter F. Drucker
"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." --Robert Townsend
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want to be done because he wants to do it." --Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead." --Pete Hoekstra
"The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them." --Carlos Ghosn
"You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go." --Jeanette Rankin
"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
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." --Edith Wharton
"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." --Robert Louis Stevenson
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." --Winston Churchill
"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 F. Drucker
"If you're not sure where you are going, you're liable to end up someplace else." --Robert F. Mager
"The things we fear most in organizations--fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances--are the primary sources of creativity." --Margaret Wheatley
"Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems." --Brian Tracy
"A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself." --Joel Barker
"There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier." --Charles F. Kettering
"Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them." --Diogenes of Sinope
"Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it." --David Star Jordan
"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
"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." --Ray Kroc
"The important thing is this: to be able to give up in any given moment all that we are for what we can become." --DeSeaux
"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." --Arnold Glasow
"I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through--then follow through." --Edward Rickenbacker
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." --Kurt Vonnegut
"A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them." --M.D. Arnold
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." --Woodrow Wilson
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”- Buddha
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” - Mahatma Gandhi
“Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”- Peter Diamandis
“The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. When the leader demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together, the team wins.” - Howard Schultz
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” - Elon Musk
“It doesn’t matter how great your original product or idea is, if you can’t build a great company, then your product will not endure.”- Brian Chesky
“To achieve something meaningful, you need to know where you are heading and be willing to train hard to get there.” - Arianna Huffington
“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.”- J.K. Rowling
“To me, leadership is about encouraging people. It’s about stimulating them. It’s about enabling them to achieve what they can achieve – and to do that with a purpose”- Christine Lagarde
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” - Eric Hoffer
“You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end. A messy or incomplete conclusion can reverberate for years to come.” - Robert Greene
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan
“For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.” - Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart—live for it, die for it, and you will find the happiness that you had thought could never be yours.” - Dale Carnegie
“Great masters neither want nor need your worship. Your greatest gift to them and yourself is to emulate their divinity by claiming it as your own.” - Alan Cohen
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”- Henry Ford
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.” - Albert Einstein
“If you do every job like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life, that’s when you get noticed.” - Mary Barra
“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” —Tony Blair
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”- John C. Maxwell
“Set and maintain high standards. If you have to be hard on people, do it with love and a genuine wish for them to improve. Praise people when they hit the standard. -Sam Altman
“A good leader must hate the wrong thing more than they hate the pain of doing the right thing.” - Angela Jiang
“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.” - John C. Maxwell
“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.” - Seth Godin
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” - Warren Bennis
“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” - Seth Godin
“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”- Peter F. Drucker
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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
“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”- Buddha
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”- Leo Tolstoy
“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
“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”- Coco Chanel
“A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” - Nelson Mandela
“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” - Toni Morrison
“Make people feel like the hero of their journey and they will do more.”- Maxime Lagacé
“You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.” - Travis Bradberry
“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
“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
“Leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory.” - Jocko Willink
“Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.” - Warren Bennis
“The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” - Henry Kissinger
“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
“Leaders don’t force people to follow – they invite them on a journey.” - Charles S. Lauer
“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” - Thomas Sowell
“In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” - Tina Fey
“Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.” - George Patton
“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” - J.P. Morgan
“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” - Adlai Stevenson
“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” - Amelia Earhart
“Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”- Warren Bennis
“A leader operating in enemy territory should always project positivity and optimism.”- Naval Ravikant
“Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise.” - Peter F. Drucker
“Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.” - Patrick Ness
“Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” - Mary D. Poole
“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
“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
“Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.” - John Gardner
“Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy.” - Paul Polman
“Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.” - Max De Pree
“Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility.” - Stanley McChrystal
“If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.” - Brad Szollose
“Find the smartest people you can and surround yourself with them.” - Marissa Meyer
“Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.” - Melinda Gates
“Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion.” - Oprah Winfrey
“It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.” - Queen Elizabeth
“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” - Mother Teresa
“Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.” - Bill Clinton
“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
“A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.” - Jack Ma
“Leadership should be focused on extending the ladder of opportunity for everyone.” - Justin Trudeau
“In order to remain relevant, you must establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.”- Marc Benioff
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” - Thomas Paine
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” - Plato
“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” - Confucius
“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
“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.” - Margaret Thatcher
“I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” - John Hume
“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.” - Michelangelo
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” - Henry Adams
“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
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”- Thomas Edison
“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
“All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”- Walt Disney
“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
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”- Eleanor Roosevelt
“There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.” —Warren Bennis
“Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy.” —Paul Polman
“Good leaders build products. Great leaders build cultures. Good leaders deliver results. Great leaders develop people. Good leaders have vision. Great leaders have values. Good leaders are role models at work. Great leaders are role models in life.” —Adam Grant
“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.” —Warren Bennis
“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” —Lao Tzu
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas A. Edison
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” —Warren Buffett
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” —Barack Obama
“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
“We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.” —Kofi Annan
“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.” —Isaac Newton
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” —Stephen R. Covey
“Hire character. Train skill.” —Peter Schutz
“Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” —Tina Fey
“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.” —Brandon Sanderson
“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” —Steve Jobs
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” —Peter F. Drucker
“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” —Sheryl Sandberg
“Leading people is the most challenging and, therefore, the most gratifying undertaking of all human endeavors.” —Jocko Willink
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” —George Patton
“Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.” —E. Joseph Cossman
“Leaders don’t force people to follow – they invite them on a journey.” —Charles S. Lauer
“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” —Toni Morrison
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” —Malala Yousafzai
“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
“You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.” —Travis Bradberry
“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” —Karen Lamb
“The test of leadership is, is anything or anyone better because of you?” —Mark Sanborn
“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 F. Drucker
“A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.” —Joe DiMaggio
“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
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” —Martin Luther King Jr
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.” —Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“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
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” —Chuck Swindoll
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” —Winston Churchill
“True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” —Sheryl Sandberg
“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
“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
“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
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” —Peter F. Drucker
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” —Mother Teresa
“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
“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
“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.” —Thomas Aquinas
“The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” —Iyanla Vanzant
“I believe in a quiet, strong and grounded leadership. I think some of the best leaders are those whose work is widely known and respected but who, themselves, are relatively unknown.” —Rachael Chong
“Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility.” —Stanley McChrystal
“Leadership is not about men in suits. It is a way of life for those who know who they are and are willing to be their best to create the life they want to live.” —Kathleen Schafer
“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
‘Restore connection’ is not just for devices, it is for people too. If we cannot disconnect, we cannot lead.” —Arianna Huffington
“Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” —Dianne Feinstein
“Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” —Joanne Ciulla
“I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” —Ginni Rometty
“We need to accept that we don’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes. Understand that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” —Arianna Huffington
“Power isn’t control at all—power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” —Beth Revis
“A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” —Stephen King, author
“As a leader, it’s a major responsibility on your shoulders to practice the behavior you want others to follow.” —Himanshu Bhatia
“Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.” —Margaret Wheatley
“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” —Sara Blakely
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams
“People respond well to those that are sure of what they want.” —Anna Wintour
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?” —Ayn Rand, author
“You are never too small to make a difference.” —Greta Thunberg
“Education is the mother of leadership.” —Wendell Willkie
“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” —Jim Rohn
“You have to look at your career and personal life at the big-picture level: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Doing that helps me feel OK during the weeks when one part of my life overwhelms the other.” —Joanna Horsnail
“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” —Maya Angelou
“Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex moral relationship between people based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” —Joanne Ciulla
“Leadership is the ability to guide others without force into a direction or decision that leaves them still feeling empowered and accomplished.”
“Leadership is about the team – the culture they keep and embrace; it’s about empathy for your customers, clients, employees and the communities where you do business; it’s about doing the right thing for the right reasons, being confident enough to take risks and responsible enough to think of those who your decisions and risks may affect.” —Kat Cole
“Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” —Brian Tracy
“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
“One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, it means I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.” —Jacinda Ardern
“Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it’s perfect. You’ll love it.’ Opportunities – the good ones – are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They’re risky. They challenge you.” —Susan Wojcicki
“My own definition of leadership is this: the capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.” —General Montgomery
“Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” —Mary D. Poole
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence, and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” —Sheryl Sandberg
“You don’t need a title to be a leader.”
“It’s okay to admit what you don’t know. It’s okay to ask for help. And it’s more than okay to listen to the people you lead – in fact, it’s essential.” —Mary Barra
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership. –Dwight Eisenhower
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. –George Patton
My responsibility is getting all my players playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back.
A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men. —Stephen King
I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn't. —Dee Dee Myers
There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity, and courage. —Fuchan Yuan
“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
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
"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
We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity. —Marco Rubio
To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. —Pat Riley
“To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." --Harvey S. Firestone
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
Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow. —Chinese Proverb
What you do has far greater impact than what you say. —Stephen Covey
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. —Abraham Lincoln
Never give an order that can't be obeyed. —General Douglas MacArthur
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. —Stephen Covey
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. —Tom Peters
Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts. —Erskine Bowles
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
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. —Norman Schwarzkopf
Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. —Woodrow Wilson
Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day. —Jesse Jackson
Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led. —Ross Perot
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
It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. —Latin Proverb
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. —Thomas Jefferson
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams
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
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. —Maya Angelou
“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
I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be. —Warren Bennis
He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. —Solon
He who has great power should use it lightly. —Seneca
"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." --Colin Powell
"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." --Stephen Covey
Education is the mother of leadership. —Wendell Willkie
Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership. —Donald Rumsfeld
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." --Eleanor Roosevelt
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. —General George Patton
The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. —Eric Hoffer
"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
A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward. —Ovid
