Leadership Quotes

With a good conscience our only sure reward with history the final judge of our deeds let us go forth to lead the land we love asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

~ John F. Kennedy

Achilles absent was Achilles still.

~ Homer

To lead the people walk behind them.

~ Lao Tzu

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

~ Indira Gandhi

When you come into the presence of a leader of men you know that you have come into the presence of fire - that it is best not uncautiously to touch that man - that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.

~ Woodrow Wilson

I've got to follow them - I am their leader.

~ Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

The reward of a general is not a bigger tent - but command.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

A leader may symbolize and express what is best in his people like Pericles or what is worst like Hitler but he cannot successfully express what is only in his heart and not in theirs.

~ Charles Yost

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

~ Charles De Gaulle

A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.

~ Lister Sinclair

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.

~ Albert Camus

A leader is a dealer in hope.

~ Napoléon Bonaparte

To lead means to direct and to exact and no man dares do either - he might be unpopular. What authority we are given now is a trinity: the grin the generality and God (the Word).

~ Marya Mannes

Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes.

~ Jan Masaryk

Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism pride hardness and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him indeed they will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

~ Charles De Gaulle

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount.

~ Hindu Proverb

I have no family. My only responsibility is the welfare of Quebec. I belong to the province.

~ Maurice Duplessis

It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.

~ Daniel Defoe

Where there are no tigers a wildcat is very self-important.

~ Korean Proverb

I really believe my greatest service is in the many unwise steps I prevent.

~ William Lyon Mackenzie King

I have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat.

~ Winston Churchill

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said namely that I have inspired the nation. It was the nation and the race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

~ Winston Churchill

Winston has written four volumes about himself and called it 'World Crisis'.

~ Arthur Balfour

Winston Churchill - fifty per cent genius fifty per cent bloody fool.

~ Clement Attlee

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

~ Walter Lippmann

In Pierre Elliott Trudeau Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.

~ Irving Layton

Every woman's man and every man's woman.

~ Julius Caesar

Lincoln on Grant: He makes things get. Wherever he is, he makes things move.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Arnold H. Glasow

What helps people, helps business.

~ Leo Burnett

It is rare to find a business partner who is selfless. If you are lucky it happens once in a lifetime.

~ Michael Eisner

I think that in any group activity - whether it be business, sports, or family - there has to be leadership or it won't be successful.

~ John Wooden

As I've progressed in my career, I've come to appreciate - and really value - the other attributes that define a company's success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making.

~ Ursula Burns

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves.

~ E. Joseph Cossman

You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

~ An Wang

Each one of us, and, indeed, all those who aspire to national leadership must bring their own visions, views and styles to the business of reforming Nigeria, and the search for solutions.

~ Ibrahim Babangida

The one thing I have learned as a CEO is that leadership at various levels is vastly different. When I was leading a function or a business, there were certain demands and requirements to be a leader. As you move up the organization, the requirements for leading that organization don't grow vertically; they grow exponentially.

~ Indra Nooyi

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

~ Harold S. Geneen

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

~ Duke Ellington