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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


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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