Famous Leadership Quotes

There are leaders everywhere. Some are tough while others very democratic. What does it take to be great leader? Below are some famous leadership quotes to give you a glimpse about being the Man.

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

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. Ralph Nader

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. Mohandas Gandhi

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people. – John D. Rockefeller

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 art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. Tony Blair

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve. – Tom Landry

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

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. – Jim Rohn

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership. – Woodrow Wilson

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. – Warren G. Bennis

Leadership is influence. – John C. Maxwell

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it. – Mao Tse-Tung

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you’re ready to play as tough as you’re able to, you’d better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you’re not giving it all you’ve got. – Larry Bird

Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership. – Donald Rumsfeld

Character matters; leadership descends from character. – Rush Limbaugh

There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two. – Bertolt Brecht

To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. – Pat Riley

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

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. – Stephen Covey

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. – Harry S. Truman

The art of leadership… consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. – Adolf Hitler

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