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80 Great Leader Quotes for Best Inspiration

Life is about discovering your full potential and becoming the best version of yourself. This world has had many great leaders who changed it and made it a better place to live for future generations. They have gone but their great leader quotes will be with us forever to inspire all of us.

Therefore we decided to list down 100 such great leader quotes, that can teach us, inspire us, enlighten us, and even take us out of our dark phrase.

Also read: 100 Spiritual Quotes about life for Mental Peace

These great leader quotes won’t even inspire you but also motivate you, empower you, and help you to become the best version of yourself.

80 Great Leader Quotes List

80 Great Leader Quotes for Best Inspiration

1. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller

2. “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.” — Walt Disney

3. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln

4. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” — Nancy D. Solomon

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. “You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.” — Jeanette Rankin

7. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” — Jack Welch

8. “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

9. “Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.” — Lyndon B Johnson

10. “Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.” — Chris Hadfield

11. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.’ — Martin Luther King, Jr

12. “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” — Ronald Reagan

13. “You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.” — Jeanette Rankin

14. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” — John F. Kennedy

15. “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

16. “Earn your leadership every day.” — Michael Jordan

17. “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” — Nelson Mandela

18. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Harold R. McAlindon

19. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller

20. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.” — Peter Drucker

21. “Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.” — Jim Rohn

22. “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

23. “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” — David Star Jordan

24. “Leaders don’t inflict pain, they share the pain.” — Max Depree

25. “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through–then follow through.” — Edward Rickenbacker

26. “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” — Seth Godin

27. “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world and impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” — Woodrow Wilson

28. “Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” — John D. Rockefeller

29. “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love, and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight, and focused attention.” — Deepak Chopra

30. “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

31. “The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.” — Vaclav Havel

32. “The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.” — Casey Stengel

33. “The great leaders have always stage-managed their effects.” — Charles de Gaulle

34. “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.” — Warren Bennis

35. ‘Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” — Warren Bennis

36. “No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.” — Michel de Montaigne

37. “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.” — Warren Bennis

38. “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” — Tom Peters

39. “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” — David Star Jordan

40. “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” — J. P. Morgan

41. “Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.” — Chester W. Nimitz

42. “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.” — J. P. Morgan

43. “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” — Tony Blair

44. “The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act.” —Barbara Sher

45. “There are three secrets to managing. The first secret is to have patience. The second is to be patient. And the third most important secret is patience.” — Chuck Tanner

46. “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” — Arnold Glasow

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

48. “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal or any goal.” — Vince Lombardi

49. “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” — Dianne Feinstein

50. “Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths.” — John Zenger

51. “Those who let things happen usually lose to those who make things happen.” — Dave Weinbaum

52. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward

53. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” — Brian Tracy

54. “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” — Ralph Nader

55. “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” — Harvey S. Firestone

56. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” — John C. Maxwell

57. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — Francis of Assisi

58. “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” — Vince Lombardi

59. “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” — Nido Qubein

60. “Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.” — Lyndon B Johnson

61. “Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you.” — Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steelers

62. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple

63. “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” — Chuck Swindoll, Christian pastor and radio preacher

64. “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” — Mother Teresa, Catholic nun and saint

65. “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground”. — Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. President

66. “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” ― Henry Kissinger, former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State

67. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” — President John Quincy Adams, former U.S. President

68. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” — Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist

69. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” — Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India

70. “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?” — Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

71. “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain, writer

72. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart, American aviation pioneer

73. “If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you.” — Indra Nooyi, Pepsi CEO

74. “There is troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow; but had rather a thing was never done, than not done their own way, tho’ other ways very desirable.” — William Penn, early Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania

75. “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, economist, and diplomat

76. “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. President

77. “To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going.” — Joe Namath, former New York Jets quarterback

78. “True leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” — Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

79. “You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” — Sam Rayburn

80. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” — Warren Buffett, investor

Now, which of these great leader quotes do you find best and most suitable? You can also mention your favorites so that they can be added to this great leader quotes list.

Use these great leader quotes for your next team meeting or presentation as a jumping-off point.

Like this? Take a look at these 27 Proven Motivational Quotes For Exams Success

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Aditya
Aditya

Hello Readers, I'm Aditya! A Blogger and SEO expert with an MBA Degree in Marketing and Operations. I love sharing content that develops the mindset of people and makes life better.

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