100 Awesome Leadership Quotes That Motivate life!

There is an old saying which deeply influences my life and that is this; " if you want to be wise, stay in touch with the wise people". Do you want to be a wiser person than you are now? Do you know how great people perceive life issues and things ? If you want to discover their secrets. Here are their awesome sayings:

1. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. John Quincy Adams

2. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. John C Maxwell

3. The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already. John Buchan
4. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain Trumpet. Theodore M. Hesburgh

5. Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach. Rosabeth Moss Kantor

6. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore Roosevelt

7. He that cannot obey cannot command. Benjamin Franklin

8. All Leadership is influence. John C. Maxwell

9. The only safe ship in a storm is leadership. Faye Wattleton

10. Leadership is not magnetic personality that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Peter F. Drucker

11. A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not. John Quincy Adams

12. A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. Henrik Ibsen

13. A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune. Anon

14. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. Jack Welch

15. The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. Kenneth Blanchard

16. Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. Ralph Waldo Emerson

17. I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. Ralph Nader

18. Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. George S. Patton

19. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. General Colin Powell

20. The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. Jim Rohn

21. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. Theodore Hesburgh

22. A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves. Eleanor Roosevelt

23. Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. Harold Geneen

24. Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon. James Fisher

25. Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing. Mary D. Poole

26. Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it. -John Naisbitt

27. Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. Colin Powell

28. Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it. Marian Anderson

29. A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done. Dwight David Eisenhower

30. There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. Nelson Mandela

31. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

32. Leadership is the lifting of a man's vision to higher sights, the raising of a man's performance to a higher standard, the building of a man's personality beyond its normal limitations. Peter Drucker

33. Leaders "are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organisations where people continually expand their abilities to understanding complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning." Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline

34. Presidents, leaders, to be effective have to represent the whole to the parts and to the world outside. They may live in the centre but they must not be the centre. To reinforce the common sense they must be a constant teacher, ever travelling, ever talking, ever listening, the chief missionary of the common cause. Charles Handy

35. The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers and best learners - They are shameless thieves Tom Peters

36. If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart. Nelson Mandela

37. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Mother Theresa

38. 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. Tim Waterstone

39. I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum. Bishop Desmond Tutu

40. The only test of leadership is that somebody follows. Robert K. Greenleaf

41. It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate directly to how life is better for everyone. . . . The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment. W. Edwards Deming

42. I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships. If it isn't about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble. Anita Roddick

43. Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning. Warren Bennis

44. Principle of insufficient mandate: - "those unable to change themselves cannot change those around them."

45. Those who are to change significantly that which they freshly encounter must themselves be changed by the changing of it. Reg Revans

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sometimes sail with the wind and sometimes against it - but sail we must, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell James

46. It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt

47. Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the curved wooden figurehead leads the ship . Laurence Peter, The Peter Principle.

48. You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long. Boris Yeltsin

49. A councilor ought not to sleep the whole night through, a man to whom the populace is entrusted, and who has many responsibilities. (The Iliad) Homer.

50. A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone. Henry Kissinger.

51. A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. Lao Tzu.

52. A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under. Sam Houston.

53. A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. James Callaghan.

54. A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.
55. A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone . Henry Kissinger.

56. A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader. Golda Meir.

57. Always drink upstream from the herd. Will Rogers.

58. Be the chief but never the lord. Lao Tzu.

59. But me thought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain. Samuel Pepys.

60. Education is the mother of leadership. Wendell Willkie.

61. Example is leadership. Albert Schweitzer.

62. For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string. Spike Milligan

63. Grown men do not need leaders. Edward Abbey.

64. He is great enough that is his own master. Joseph Hall.

65. I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much. Newt Gingrich.

66. It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. Douglas Adams.

67. It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

68. Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain. George Will.

69. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker.

70. Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right. Max Stirner.

71. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. Andrew Carnegie.

72. Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself. Thomas J. Watson.

73. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. Arnold H. Glasow.

74. Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. Bertrand Russell.

75. Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader. Tacitus.

76. So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. Peter Druncker.

77. Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. Euripides.

78. The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, 'Go!' -a leader says, 'Let's go!'. E.M. Kelly.

79. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. Walter Lippmann.

80. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. Max De Pree.

81. The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully. Walter Lippmann.

82. The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players. Blaine Lee.

83. The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself. Blaine Lee.

84. The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force. Andre Maurois.

85. The sky cannot have two suns. Chiang Kai-Shek.

86. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. Theodore Martin Hesburgh.

87. To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. Andre Malraux.

88. To lead people, walk beside them... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!' Lao Tzu.

89. We must be part of the general staff at the inception, rather than the ambulance drivers at the bitter end. Lane Kirkland.

90. What you cannot enforce, do not command. Sophocles.

91. When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. `What do you mean?' the media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in the Judeo Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.' Pat Robertson.

92. When you're leading, don't talk. Thomas E. Dewey.

93. You had better have one King than five hundred. Charles II of England.

94. To be a leader in the Church has always required strength and faith beyond the merely human. J. Oswald Sanders.

95. People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character. Bill Hybels.

96. The ideal leader is one who hears the voice of God, and beckons on as the voice calls him and them. A.W. Tozer.

97. Once a leader delegates, he should show utmost confidence in the people he has entrusted. A.B. Simpson.

98. 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. J. Oswald sanders.

99. Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people" — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Peter F. Drucker.

100. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How do you see these well sayings? Are they helpful for you?