Throughout history, there has been an abundance of charismatic and powerful leaders that have passed down their words of wisdom through memorable leadership quotes to help others recognize their power and the responsibility that comes with it. With these leadership quotes, many people have changed their lives and the others around them. From powerful leaders of change like Martin Luther King Jr. to powerhouse names like Coco Chanel, these leadership quotes will make you feel unstoppable and like you can take on the world. Don’t forget to add some to your vision board or put them in a place where you can always see it and remind yourself how powerful you are!
150 Leadership Quotes
- “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”- Eleanor Roosevelt
- “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
- “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”- Walt Disney
- “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
- “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”- Thomas Edison
- “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
- “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” - Henry Adams
- “If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius.” - Michelangelo
- “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” - John F. Kennedy
- “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” - John Hume
- “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.” - Margaret Thatcher
- “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
- “Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” - Thomas Jefferson
- “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
- “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” - Confucius
- “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” - Plato
- “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” - Thomas Paine
- “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” - Abraham Lincoln
- “In order to remain relevant, you must establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.”- Marc Benioff
- “Leadership should be focused on extending the ladder of opportunity for everyone.” - Justin Trudeau
- “A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.” - Jack Ma
- “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
- “Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.” - Bill Clinton
- “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” - Mother Teresa
- “It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.” - Queen Elizabeth II
- “Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion.” - Oprah Winfrey
- “Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.” - Melinda Gates
- “Find the smartest people you can and surround yourself with them.” - Marissa Meyer
- “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.” - Brad Szollose
- “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
- “Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.” - Diogenes
- “Leaders walk a fine line between self-confidence and humility.” - Stanley McChrystal
- “Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.” - Max De Pree
- “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
- “Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy.” - Paul Polman
- “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” - Ralph Nader
- “Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.” - John Gardner
- “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
- “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.”- Dianne Feinstein
- “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
- “Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” - Mary D. Poole
- “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.” - Patrick Ness
- “Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise.” - Peter F. Drucker
- “A leader operating in enemy territory should always project positivity and optimism.”- Naval Ravikant
- “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”- Warren Bennis
- “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” - Amelia Earhart
- “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” - Adlai Stevenson
- “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” - J.P. Morgan
- “Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.” - George Patton
- “In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” - Tina Fey
- “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” - Thomas Sowell
- “Leaders don’t force people to follow – they invite them on a journey.” - Charles S. Lauer
- “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” - Martin Luther King Jr
- “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
- “The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” - Henry Kissinger
- “Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.” - Warren Bennis
- “Leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory.” - Jocko Willink
- “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
- “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
- “You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.” - Travis Bradberry
- “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” - Colin Powell
- “Make people feel like the hero of their journey and they will do more.”- Maxime Lagacé
- “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” - Toni Morrison
- “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” - Publilius Syrus
- “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” - Nelson Mandela
- “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”- Coco Chanel
- “Earn your leadership every day.” - Michael Jordan
- “Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.” - John Naisbitt
- “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” - Margaret Fuller
- “Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results.” - Robin Sharma
- “Leadership distilled down to 3 words: Make a difference.”- Robin Sharma
- “The price of greatness is responsibility.”- Winston Churchill
- “To lead people, walk behind them.” - Lao Tzu
- “All leaders are readers.” - Jim Rohn
- “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” - Theodore Roosevelt
- “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
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”- Leo Tolstoy
- “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
- “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”- Buddha
- “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” - Steve Jobs
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison
- “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
- “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
- “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller
- “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
- “The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.” - Faye Wattleton
- “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.” - Isaac Newton
- “A leader is a dealer in hope.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
- “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” - Bill Bradley
- “Leadership is like third grade: it means repeating the significant things.” - Max De Pree
- “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sandberg
- “Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”- Peter F. Drucker
- “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” - Seth Godin
- “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” - Warren Bennis
- “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.” - Rosalynn Carter
- “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
- “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
- “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” - Peter F. Drucker
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” - William Arthur Ward
- “The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.” - Seth Godin
- “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” - Max Lucado
- “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” - Warren Bennis
- “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others”- Bill Gates
- “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” - Sheryl Sandberg
- “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.” - John C. Maxwell
- “A good leader must hate the wrong thing more than they hate the pain of doing the right thing.” - Angela Jiang
- “Do what is right, not what is easy.” - Unknown
- “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
- Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” - Steve Jobs
- “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”- John C. Maxwell
- “No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders. So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself, to use yourself completely – all your skills, gifts and energies – in order to make your vision manifest. You must withhold nothing. You must, in sum, become the person you started out to be, and to enjoy the process of becoming.” - Warren Bennis
- “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” - George Patton
- “You manage things; you lead people.” - Grace Hopper
- “A boss has the title, a leader has the people.” - Simon Sinek
- “The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.” - Sheryl Sandberg
- “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” - Mother Teresa
- “Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.” - Nelson Mandela
- “Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.”- Winston Churchill
- “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” - Tony Blair
- “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
- “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
- “Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.” - Lyndon B Johnson
- “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”- John F. Kennedy
- “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”- Warren Buffett
- “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”- Henry Ford
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.” - E. Joseph Cossman
- “You either run with lions or walk with sheep.” - Matshona Dhliwayo
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” - Leroy Eimes
- “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
- “‘Never look back’ is my philosophy.”- Helen Clark
- “We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.”- J.K. Rowling
- “To achieve something meaningful, you need to know where you are heading and be willing to train hard to get there.” - Arianna Huffington
- “Greatness is consistency driven by a deep love of the work.”- Maria Popova
- “No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.”- Pope Francis
- “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
- “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” - Elon Musk
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”- Buddha
- “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” - Oprah Winfrey Want more positive quotes? Check out…50 Thinking of You Quotes150 Good Morning Quotes100 Quotes about Change50 Monday Motivation Quotes100 Wedding and Marriage Quotes
