Leadership Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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.

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

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...

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

William O. Douglas

[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.

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.

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."

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.

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

Leadership ability determines a person's level of effectiveness.

John C. Maxwell

Part of the task of the leader is to make others participate in his leadership. The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power.

Mary Parker Follett

There is a major country in the world - G7 Country - that has decided to do this with us and has invited us to become the primary contactee to precipitate an event with these extraterrestrial vehicles with the full support of their air force, space command, everything, land and meet the leadership of this country with us facilitating this so that this can than be proximally disclosed to the world, and that's what we are doing eminent - what we are working on eminently.

Steven M. Greer

Hayden had resigned as Opposition leader in 1983 as Malcolm Fraser was in the process of calling the election, but remained convinced that he would have won: I am not convinced the Labor Party could not win under my leadership. I believe a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory the way the country is.

Active idiots carry their dysfunction into positions of leadership and remain oblivious to the havoc they wreak.... Recovering idiots are not perfect.... But we're working on it.

People in organizations get ticked and become increasingly cynical every time a new change initiative, continuous process improvement, leadership development program, customer service seminar, internal and/or external communication initiative is brought in; and nothing improves.

The imperative need of this nation at all times is the leadership of Uncommon Men or Women.

The female view that one strengthens oneself by strengthening others is finding greater acceptance, and female values of inclusion and connection are emerging as valuable leadership qualities.

The freedom of the individual and his willingness to follow real leadership are at the core of America's strength.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Affirmative action has to be combined with a broader program of social reform that would emphasize social rights: the right to employment, the right to education, the right to good health. Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.

William Julius Wilson

Leadership is tied to conviction. Leaders have a vision of a better future, they feel strongly about the need to go there.

Delorese Ambrose

When the word leader, or leadership, returns to current use, it connotes a relapse into barbarism. For a civilized people, it is the most ominous word in any language.

Isabel Paterson

God is always at work, though we cannot see it, preparing people he has chosen for leadership. When the crisis comes, God fits His appointee into the place ordained for him.

John Oswald Sanders

In 1948, it was agreed that a study of classification should be made, and a committee of scientists was appointed under the leadership of Professor. J. D. Bernal.

Douglas John Foskett

There is another and higher leadership, that of the intellect, by which the methods and thoughts of one man may affect the whole civilized world. Industrial leaders who have most prominently attracted our attention in the past are those who have, by their inventions or their direction of activities, accumulated large fortunes ; but none of these are as great as the man who by the force of his intellect leads people throughout the civilized world to benefit themselves and others. Such a man was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor who, in his determination to eliminate error and to base our industrial relations on fact, set an example which will have an effect all over the world

Yes. I also put in the book that I felt Hugo Chavez was the Robert Mugabe of our hemisphere. In other words, this is a case for – where leadership is destroying a country. Zimbabwe used to feed South Africa. Today it's a net importer of food because the rule of an incompetent government destroyed the economy of the country.