Best 100 Leadership Motivational Quotes

Leadership Motivational Quotes

Whether you’re leading a huge team or just trying to climb the career ladder, these inspirational and motivational management quotes can help provide some useful wisdom on how best to deploy your leadership strategy.

Even though a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes the right words or an inspirational quote is just what you need to make it through the day, to inspire your team or to change your perspective. Since there are others who have dealt with the same leadership challenges you face and have written to tell about it, there are many motivational leadership quotes to lean on whenever you need them.

Here are some of my favorite leadership Motivational quotes. Tweet them, share them, but most important, use them to help you become an even better leader than you already are.

1. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein

2. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

John C. Maxwell

3. Nothing will work unless you do.

Maya Angelou

4. The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

Ray Kroc

5. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt

6. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.

Bill Bradley

7. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

George Patton

8. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

Robert Louis Stevenson

9. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

George Patton

10. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

Albert Schweitzer

11. I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Robert E. Lee

12. If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

Brad Szollose

13. The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.

Tony Blair

14. 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

15. Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership.

James Humes

16. When people talk, listen completely.

Ernest Hemingway

17. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus

18. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

19. Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.

Brian Tracy

20. The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.

Tony Blair

21. Doing what is right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what is right.

Lyndon B. Johnson

22. Don’t find fault, find a remedy.

Henry Ford

23. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

Albert Einstein

24. Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen

25. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Joshua J. Marine

26. In teamwork, silence isn’t golden. It’s deadly.

Mark Sanborn

27. I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I sure can pick smart colleagues.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

28. Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

Colin Powell

29. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

John Quincy Adams

30. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

Nelson Mandela

31. Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

George Washington Carver

32. When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Ronald Reagan

33. When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.

Roy E. Disney

34. High expectations are the key to everything.

Sam Walton

35. Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

John C. Maxwell

36. Earn your leadership every day.

Michael Jordan

37. Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.

John C. Maxwell

38. A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.

M.D. Arnold

39. A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

Jim Rohn 

40. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

41. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

George Patton

42. 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

43. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

General George Patton

44. You don’t need a title to be a leader.

Multiple Attributions

45. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

Max DePree

46. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Warren Bennis

47. To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.

Andre Malraux

48. I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

Ralph Nader

49. The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffer

50. I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.

Herbert Swope

51. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”

John C. Maxwell

52. “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

53. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.”

John C. Maxwell

54. “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

55. “A leader…is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

Nelson Mandela

56. “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”

Colin Powell

57. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Albert Einstein

58. “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

59. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

William Arthur Ward

60. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

61. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein

62. “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”

Dalai Lama

63. “He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.”

Sun Tzu

64. “He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.”

James Allen

65. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

Bruce Lee

66. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.”

Mother Teresa

67. “Nothing will work unless you do.”

Maya Angelou

68. “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”

Arnold H. Glasow

69. “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.”

Ray Kroc

70. “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

71. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”

Helen Keller

72. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

Peter Drucker

73. “Good leaders organize and align people around what the team needs to do. Great leaders motivate and inspire people with why they’re doing it.”

Marillyn Hewson

74. “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

75. “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.”

M.D. Arnold

76. “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

77. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.”

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

78. “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

79. “Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”

Harry S. Truman

80. “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.”

Warren Bennis

81. “Leading people is the most challenging and, therefore, the most gratifying undertaking of all human endeavours.”

Jocko Willink

82. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”

John C. Maxwell

83. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

John F. Kennedy

84. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”

Norman Schwarzkopf

85. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

86. “You manage things; you lead people.”

Grace Murray Hopper

87. “A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.”

M.D. Arnold

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

Arnold Glasow

89. “Respect is the key determinant of high-performance leadership. how much people respect you determines how well they perform.”

Brian Tracy

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

Abraham Lincoln

91. “The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”

Bob Marley

92. “Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

93. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”

Bill Bradley

94. “Without initiative, leaders are simply workers in leadership positions.”

Bo Bennett

95. “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” 

John C. Maxwell

96. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”

Max Lucado

97. “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

98. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Warren Bennis

99. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”

Andrew Carnegie

100. “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.”

Isaac Newton

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