Leadership Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.

The essence of traditional leadership is learned by osmosis. The next generation learns from what their elders and the current generation does. This was appropriate in a society where the pace of change was gradual.

Joni Madraiwiwi

Not blaming ourselves for mistakes is the flip side of not taking credit for our acts of courage or creativity or leadership, or our good ideas.

Charles Eisenstein

We live in a world of teams made up of all kinds of people. We see this every day on TV, in newspapers and on the web – it might news about a winning sports team, a company's leadership team who have succeeded in buying another company or it might be a about a group of homeowners who have won a battle against a big developer.

Nigel Cumberland

Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.

James MacGregor Burns

On campuses across this country, embedded in the leadership of every radical "anti-war" protest group, are organizations that promote the culture of Islamic terrorism and its anti-Western, anti-Israeli and anti-American agendas. One that will serve as an example for the others is the radical Muslim Student Association (MSA). The Muslim Student Association is an organization financed by the Saudis and also by student funds at every university where it operates. The ideas and enthusiasms that it promotes among impressionable college students should give every American cause for concern.

The decision to weigh Lieut. Gen. Patton's great services to his country, in World War I and World War II, from these shores to Casablanca and through Tunisia to triumph in Sicily, on the one hand, against an indefensible act on the other, was Gen. Eisenhower's.
As his report shows, General Eisenhower in making his decision also considered the value to our country of General Patton's aggressive, winning leadership in the bitter battles which are to come before final victory. I am confident that you will agree with me that Gen. Eisenhower's decision, under these difficult circumstances, was right and proper.

Henry L. Stimson

Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him. In their despair a number of those who no longer have confidence in the leadership of our society look up to the writer, the master of words. They hope against hope that the man of talent and sensitivity can perhaps rescue civilization. Maybe there is a spark of the prophet in the artist after all.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Having taken advantage of the carelessness of the KGB, the true communist ran to Moscow, with the intention of announcing the Western journalists that communism in Partgrad is being built in a wrong way and to begging the Western leaders to exert pressure on Soviet leadership so that the latter would rectify the Soviet communism and he, a true communist would be taken back in the party.

Aleksandr Zinovyev

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.

If there is anyone worried the last four years are the best we can do, if there is anyone who fears that the American dream is fading away, if there is anyone who wonders whether better jobs and better paychecks are things of the past, I have a clear and unequivocal message: with the right leadership, America will come roaring back.

The fundamental inability to grasp the fact that real leadership is accepting that you are merely another cog in the wheel has derailed many careers and deranged many managers.

Damien Richardson

Dare to go forward. Courage is the mark of greatness in leadership

We have switched from defense to offense and in this battle all the members of the Hamas leadership are legitimate targets.

I believe that the mindset that allows you to spend your working life thanking and congratulating people rather than being unpleasant to them is the mainstay of good leadership.

The Human Behavior School: This approach to the analysis of management is based on the central thesis that, since managing involves getting things done with and through people, the study of management must be centered on interpersonal relations. Variously called the "human relations," "leadership," or "behavioral sciences" approach... This school concentrates on the "people" part of management and rests on the principle that, where people work together as groups in order to accomplish objectives, "people should understand people."

Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players.

[Apple] carries a valuation of an image that is over-inflated due largely to the powerful efforts of Steve Jobs who made the company appear magical. As we end the year, the valuation of the company appears to have massive downward pressure and this is largely because the architect of that massively powerful image has passed — and along with that passing Apple's apparent leadership.

The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.

William O. Douglas

Only immediate assertion of leadership by the United States could prevent war in the next decade... The President and the Secretary of State must shock the country into a realization of its peril...

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

Lewis H. Lapham

If you don't know the men at your back by name, don't be surprised if they won't follow you into battle. On the other hand, don't be surprised if they will, either, because there are countless other factors you must take into account. Leadership is a slippery commodity, not easily manufactured or understood.

We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.

Calvin Coolidge

After the Shah's departure from Iran, I will not become a president nor accept any other leadership role. Just like before, I limit my activities only to guiding and directing the people.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Narcissism is often the driving force behind the desire to obtain a leadership position.

Manfred Kets de Vries