Best 102 Motivational Quotes Leadership
Leadership is a crucial component in any organisation or group. Effective leadership inspires and motivates people to achieve their goals and succeed in their endeavours. But what makes a great leader? There is no simple answer, but many successful leaders have shared their wisdom through motivational quotes. These quotes can provide inspiration and guidance for anyone looking to improve their leadership skills or for those in need of a little extra motivation. From famous figures to business executives, there is no shortage of powerful quotes that can help individuals become better leaders. In this article, we will explore some of the most motivational quotes on leadership.

- “You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.” ~ Doug Floyd
- “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” Eleanor Roosevelt
- “The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humour, but without folly.” Jim Rohn
- “The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.” ~ Knute Rockne
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” William Arthur Ward
- “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” J.P. Morgan
- “It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” Adlai E. Stevenson II
- “I don’t want yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.” ~ Samuel Goldwyn
- “If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.” Tom Rath
- “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” Orrin Woodward
- “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.” ~ Mohandas Gandhi
- “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Don’t blow off another’s candle for it won’t make yours shine brighter.” Jaachynma N.E. Agu
- “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” Ronald Reagan
- “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Peter F. Drucker
- “Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men–the other 999 follow women.” Groucho Marx
- “When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.” Jerry Porras
- “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” Tina Fey
- “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.” M.D. Arnold
- “Power isn’t control at all–power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” Beth Revis
- “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” George Patton
- “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” Father Theodore M. Hesburgh
- “I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.” Lao Tzu
- “It is absolutely necessary…for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders.” George Washington
- “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter.” Winston Churchill
- “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. John F. Kennedy
- “A leader takes people where they would never go on their own.” Hans Finzel
- “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Peter F. Drucker
- “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” Ken Kesey
- “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 you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” Woodrow Wilson
- “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” Max Lucado
- “Examples are not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” Albert Schweitzer
- “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” Brian Tracy
- “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” John C. Maxwell
- “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” Ralph Nader
- “The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.” Brandon Sanderson
- “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” Publilius Syrus
- “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.” John C. Maxwell
- “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” Steve Jobs
- “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” Steve Jobs
- “A leader…is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.” Nelson Mandela
- “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” John Maxwell
- “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” Colin Powell
- “To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.” Pat Riley
- “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
- “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” John Maxwell
- “A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon
- “A good plan executed violently now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” George Patton
- “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” Theodore Roosevelt
- “Earn your leadership every day.” Michael Jordan
- “I don’t see myself being special; I just see myself having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, to have answers.” Tupac Shakur
- “Success at the highest level comes down to one question: ‘Can you make the choice that your happiness can come from someone else’s success?’ No one has qualities like courage, vision, charisma, adaptability, and decisiveness in equal measure. But every great leader does make the same decision–and so can you.” Jeff Haden (sorry, couldn’t resist)
- “If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But I do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.” Henry David Thoreau
- “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” ~ John C. Maxwell
- “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” Robert E. Lee
- “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” ~ Jimmy Dean
- “The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stop leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” Colin Powell
- “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” ~ Vince Lombardi
- “Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?'” Margaret Thatcher
- “There is little success where there is little laughter.” ~ Andrew Carnegie
- “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” Rosalynn Carter
- “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.” ~ Charles Swindoll
- “There is a difference between being a leader and being a boss. Both are based on authority. A boss demands blind obedience; a leader earns his authority through understanding and trust.” Klaus Balkenhol
- “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” ~ Henry Ford
- “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” Nancy D. Solomon
- “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” Max De Pree
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”~ Maya Angelou
- “We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.” Whoopi Goldberg
- . “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ~ William Arthur Ward
- “A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others so that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” Beth Revis
- “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Always remember, Son, the best boss is the one who bosses the least. Whether it’s cattle, or horses, or men; the least government is the best government.” Ralph Moody
- “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.” Brad Szollose
- “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~ Dalai Lama
- “‘Give as few orders as possible,’ his father had told him once long ago. ‘Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.'” Frank Herbert (from Dune)
- “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ Christopher Columbus
- “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” Tony Blair
- “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” ~ Aristotle
- “Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through.” Jarod Kintz
- “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” ~ Jim Rohn
- “In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.” Seth Godin
- “Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart.” ~ Ancient Indian Proverb
- “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” ~ Sheryl Sandberg
- “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” Patrick Lencioni
- “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” ~ Joshua J. Marine
- “No guts, no story.” Chris Brady
- “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” ~ Jamie Paolinetti
- “Leadership is an action, not a position.” Donald McGannon
- “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way” Ronald Reagan
- “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” ~ Chinese Proverb
- “I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: try to please everybody.” Herbert Bayard Swope
- “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” ~ Gloria Steinem
- “Show me the man you honour and I will know what kind of man you are.” Thomas John Carlisle
- “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” ~ Beverly Sills
conclusion
In conclusion, motivational quotes can be a powerful tool for leaders to inspire and motivate their team members. These quotes can help create a positive and productive work environment that encourages employees to do their best work. Leaders who use motivational quotes to inspire their team members can help foster a culture of growth, development, and innovation within their organisation. Additionally, motivational quotes can be used to reinforce key messages and values that are important to the organisation. By incorporating motivational quotes into their leadership style, leaders can help their team members feel more engaged, motivated, and empowered to achieve their goals.