Leadership Quotes To Inspire

Strong Leaders use memorable leadership quotes as tools to support their mission, vision, strategy and expectations for quality performance.

leadership quotes

Inspirational phrases and powerful quotes can be effective leadership training tools that help to enforce key messages.

"I have been searching for leadership activities and materials for days. This is the only site where I was so pleasantly surprised to discover so many valuable tools and resources. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks."

- Brandy Doris

Quotes are utilized to add credibility to leadership articles, a message, story, or key point of discussion. By tying in a memorable quote, a leader can help to ensure the message is more clearly understood by the audience.

In addition, leaders know that retention of information is greatly improved by utilizing quotes that support their message.

Leaders who take the time to research quality leadership quotes are also learning and growing the process as they will no doubt stumble upon new ideas and insights during their pursuit of the perfect leadership quotation.

Try incorporating some of these powerful quotations into your staff or training meetings.  Many authors use a memorable quote at the beginning of each chapter in their book. They do this to support the introduction of the chapter title and get the reader interested in what they are about to read. 

Top Leadership Quotes

leadership quotations

"It’s never crowded along the extra mile."

- Wayne Dyer


"There is plenty of room at the top – but no place to sit down."

- Unknown


"Clear your mind of can’t."

- Samuel Johnson


"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit."

- Conrad Hilton


"The right man is the one who seizes the moment."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


"Be enthusiastic as a leader. You can’t light a fire with a wet match."

- Unknown


"Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them."

- John Maxwell


"Never try to teach a pig to sing: it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."

- Paul Dickson


"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out."

- Ronald Reagan


"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not."

- Lucille Ball

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of succes; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall."

- Stephen R. Covey


"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."

- John Le Care’


"Things may come to those who wait, but only what’s left behind by those that hustle."

- Abraham Lincoln


"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


"There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear."

- David Mahoney


"Big thinking precedes great achievement."

- Wilfred Peterson


"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F. Kennedy


"I have yet to find a man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism."

- Charles Schwab


"The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them."

- General Colin Powell


"You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere."

- Lee Iacocca

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish."

- Sam Walton


"The price of greatness is responsibility."

- Winston Churchill


"Eagles don’t flock."

- Ross Perot


"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

- John Maxwell


"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes."

- Peter Drucker


"There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability."

- Robert Half


"How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?"

- Harry S. Truman


"All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common; it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership."

- John Kenneth Galbraith


"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."

- Henry Kissinger


"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it."

- Dwight Eisenhower

"If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage"

- John Viney


"Things may come to those who wait, but only what’s left behind by those that hustle."

- Abraham Lincoln


"Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it."

- Unknown


"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who believed that something inside of them was superior to circumstance."

- Bruce Barton


"There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than what you are capable of living."

- Nelson Mandela


"It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped."

- Anthony Robbins


"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."

- Plato


"The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower


"Presidential leadership needn’t always cost money. Look for low and no-cost options. They can be surprisingly effective."

- Donald Rumsfeld


"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage."

- Anais Nin

"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


"Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate toward some goal which they come to find desirable."

- Ordway Tead


"Anything worth doing, is worth doing now!"

- Ralph Stayer


"Any business or industry that pays equal rewards to its goof-offs and eager beavers sooner or later will find itself with more goof-oofs than eager beavers."

- Mick Delaney


"There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that once unleashed can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality."

- Anthony Robbins


"Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have."

- Zig Ziglar


"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

- Henry Ford


How To Use Leadership Quotes

Having reviewed the preceding list of leadership quotes, no doubt one or two leadership quotes have got you thinking from a different perspective. In fact, that's the whole point - to get you and your team thinking; to engage your mind and inspire discussion between team members.

Leadership quotes are useful tools you can use to support your own vision and expectations to your team.

If you still haven't found that perfect leadership quote - don't worry, we have several pages on leadership quotations.We invite you also to check our our Leadership-Tools Pinterest page for additional leadership quotations.

One quick word of caution: Use leadership quotes in your communications, but don’t overuse them.

Whether you are the leader of a team, or a team member who aspires to lead, we hope you have found this page useful.

More Leadership Quotes

Perhaps you need quotations for other leadership related topics?

Not to worry, here we provide several additional bonus links for more outstanding leadership quotes that can help to motivate and inspire.

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