Emerging Leaders

Leadership Quotes

"Leadership is for Everyone"

"One falsehood spoils a thousand truths."
— African Proverb

"Knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do."
- Lucille Ball

"A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call."
— Warren Bennis

"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong."
— William J.H. Boetcker

"Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure."
-Admiral Arleigh A. Burke

"Don't go through life, grow through life."
- Eric Butterworth

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
- M. Kathleen Casey

"Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely."
- Karen Kaiser Clark

"An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success."
- Stephen R. Covey

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
— Thomas Edison

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
— Albert Einstein

"People are more easily led than driven."
- David Harold Fink

"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

" A person cannot do right in one department of life while attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."
— Judy Garland

"Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions."
- Harold Geneen

"Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together."
- Jesse Jackson

"The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
- Erica Jong

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

"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves."
- Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's

"To lead people, walk beside them ...
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
The next best, the people honor and praise.
The next, the people fear;
and the next, the people hate ...
When the best leader's work is done the people say,
'We did it ourselves!'"
- Lao-tsu

"Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint."
- Lewis H. Lapham

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln

"The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on."
- Walter J. Lippmann

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor."
-Vincent T. Lombardi

"Everything that is done in this world is done by hope."
— Martin Luther

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity"
- George Patton

"Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead."
- Ross Perot

"You may have afresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally."
- Lao Tse

"In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions."
- Margaret Wheatly