Leadership Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Margaret Chase Smith

John Buchan

John Kotter

Kamisese Mara

Garry Wills

Harold Geneen

Theodore Hesburgh

You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that's assault, not leadership.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Organizations endure, however, in proportion to the breadth of the morality by which they are governed. Thus the endurance of organization depends upon the quality of leadership; and that quality derives from the breadth of the morality upon which it rests.

Chester Barnard

Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader. As a leader I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.

Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

Donald Rumsfeld

The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people.

Strength, the American way, is not manifested by threats of criminal prosecution or police state methods.
Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented. Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.

Margaret Chase Smith

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

Donald Rumsfeld

The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers.... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership.

It is with obedience to your call that I take up the burden of government leadership for the final time.

Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.

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.

Theodore Hesburgh

Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

James MacGregor Burns

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. And the way we become leaders is by learning about leadership through life and job experiences, not with university degrees.

Leadership is particularly necessary to ensure ready acceptance of the unfamiliar and that which is contrary to tradition.

Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership.

James MacGregor Burns

Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past.

I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people... Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith. Nothing can make me change my own belief.