The 50 Best Quotes About Leadership

Over the years, I've come across some great thoughts on how to be an effective leader, and when I find these thoughts, I jot them down in a notebook. I have quotes on all kinds of things, from faith and marriage to sports and, yes, leadership. I've narrowed down my list of the best leadership quotes to just 50. Not every one is something I agree with 100%, but rather, these are the leadership quotes that have made me think and reevaluate my own leadership strategies. Leadership, at least for me, wasn't something that came naturally. It took learning from my own experiences as well as learning from the experiences of others, so take a minute here and see if you can do the same.

1.  "To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
2.  "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
3.  "The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." -- Ronald Reagan
4.  "Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another." -- John C. Maxwell
5.  "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.
6.  "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." -- John F. Kennedy
7.  "He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader." -- Aristotle
8.  "Leaders must be close enough to relate to others but far enough ahead to motivate them." -- John C. Maxwell
9.  "I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself." -- Robert E. Lee
10.  "Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you." -- Peter F. Drucker
11.  "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." -- Peter F. Drucker
12.  "No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven; it's learned, not inherited." -- Tom Northup
13.  "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
14.  "The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." -- Harvey S. Firestone
15.  "Too many kings can ruin an army." -- Homer
16.  "A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them." -- M.D. Arnold
17.  "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." -- Dwight Eisenhower
18.  "Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too." -- Robert Half
19.  "The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." -- Theodore M. Hesburgh
20.  "It is absolutely necessary... for me to have persons that can think for me as well as execute orders." -- George Washington
21.  "A leader takes people where they would never go on their own." -- Hans Finzel
22.  "If you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead. Even the highest mountain had animals that step on it." -- Jack Weatherford
23.  "The leadership team is the most important asset of the company and can be its worst." -- Med Jones
24.  "A CEO's performance is as good as the performance of his middle managers." -- Med Jones
25.  "Victory breeds victory. Leadership summons participation." -- Ellen Shaffer
26.  "A leader has to command confidence and consent." -- John Christopher
27.  "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." -- Jack Welch
28.  "Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down." -- Grace Murray Hopper
29.  "Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader's arsenal." -- Howard Gardner
30.  "The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there." -- John Buchan
31.  "Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work." -- Seth Godin
32.  "It's not about you. It's about them." -- Clint Eastwood
33.  "Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determinations." -- John Seaman Garns
34.  "Leadership is being the first egg in the omelet." -- Jarod Kintz
35.  "Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." -- Norman Schwarzkopf
36.  "Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity." -- Reed Markham
37.  "'Tis skill, not strength, that governs a ship." -- Thomas Fuller
38.  "Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want." -- Diane Feinstein
39.  "A noble leader answers not to the trumpet calls of self-promotion but to the hushed whispers of necessity." -- Mollie Marti
40.  "If you want people to to think, give them intent, not instruction." -- David Marquet
41.  "You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish and nothing more." -- Orson Scott Card
42.  "To function efficiently, any group of people or employees must have faith in their leader." -- Capt. Bligh
43.  "A leader should demonstrate his thoughts and opinions through his actions, not through his words." -- Jack Weatherford
44.  "Servant leadership is an oxymoron. All true leadership is servanthood." -- Todd Stocker
45.  "Delegation is not a binary thing. There are shades of gray between a dictatorship and an anarchy." -- Jurgen Appelo
46.  "If you want to listen, don't talk. If you want to talk, listen first." -- Norbert Harms
47.  "Leadership is giving out far more than one expects in direct return. The rewards are intangible, yet priceless." -- T. Jay Taylor
48.  "A true leader doesn't lead its pack but gets followed by those who respect." -- Noa C. Kings
49.  "There is a leader in every manager; there is not a manager in every leader." -- Gert Van Mol
50.  "Humble leaders trust more easily because they realize that the world does not rest solely on their shoulders." -- Shandel Slaten