150 Leadership Quotes To Inspire The Leader Within You

Leadership quotes are the footprints and learnings of great leaders. They have contributed to the world with their innotivative ideas and persistent hard work. A good leader quotes' to inspire and instill a sense of purpose among people.

Every human has an urge to lead, inspire, to contribute for the greater good. It can be in your daily roles as a homemaker, a student, or a manager delegating and managing tasks in an organization. There is always a leader within us who is trying to break boundaries and set examples. But leadership is not a cakewalk, . Leaders should have the necessary qualities to help them succeed in their respective fields.

To inspire and keep the leader in you alive, here is the list of 150 good leadership quotes from the most remarkable leaders worldwide.

1. Don't follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you. - Margaret Thatcher

2. A leader should be visionary and have more foresight than an employee. - Jack Ma

3. Great leaders do not desire to lead but to serve. - Myles Munroe

4. I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job. - Darwin E. Smith

5. I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. - Ralph Nader

6. If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself. - Jim Rohn

7. A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves. - Lao-Tzu

8. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

9. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. - Jack Welch

10. A person who is happy is not because everything is right in his life, He is happy because his attitude towards everything in his life is right. - Sundar Pichai

11. Integrity, insight, and inclusiveness are the three essential qualities of leadership. - Sadhguru

12. It doesn’t matter when we start.
    It doesn’t matter where we start.
    All that matters is that we start. - Simon Sinek

13. As we look ahead to the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. - Bill Gates

14. Leadership is not a popularity contest; it's about leaving your ego at the door. The name of the game is to lead without a title. - Robin S. Sharma

15.No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it. - Andrew Carnegie

16. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself, and the organization gets pulled up with you. - Indra Nooyi

17. For the success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organizations as well as industries. - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

18. Leadership is a choice, not a position. - Stephen Covey

19. Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance. - J. Donald Walters

20. A real leader uses every issue, no matter how serious and sensitive, to ensure that at the end of the debate, we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before. - Nelson Mandela

21. Great leaders can see the greatness in others when they can’t see it themselves and lead them to their highest potential they don’t even know. - Roy T. Bennett

22. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. - John F. Kennedy

23. 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 conclude you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. - Colin Powell

24. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes. - Peter F. Drucker

25. The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

26. Integrity is the most valuable and respected quality of leadership. Always keep your word. - Brian Tracy.

27. Leadership is the ability to guide others without force into a direction or decision that leaves them still feeling empowered and accomplished. - Lisa Cash Hanson

28. If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are an excellent leader. - Dolly Parton

29. Leaders are made; they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price that all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. - Vince Lombardi

30. 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

31. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

32. Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

33. You need a commitment that is long-term and a commitment to leadership because that's the only way you build excellence. - Azim Premji

34. Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives. - Oprah Winfrey

35. Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could. - Steve Jobs

36. You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate. - Jeff Bezos

37. Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line. - Richard Branson

38. The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. - Tony Blair

39. Great leaders have three things; inner light, inner vision, and inner strength. - Amit Ray

40. Great leaders do not fear challenges, because challenges do not break leaders but sharpen them. - Gift Gugu Mona

41. The greatest gift of leadership is a boss who wants you to be successful. - Jon Taffer

42. Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation, and talented people working together. - Alan Mulally

43. 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

44. I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal. - Ben Carson

45. Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. - Jesse Jackson

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

47. Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to think we need the feminine qualities of leadership, which include attention to aesthetics and the environment, nurturing, affection, intuition, and the qualities that make people feel safe and cared for. - Deepak Chopra

48. A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could. - Zig Ziglar

49. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. - Steve Jobs

50. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. - Seth Godin

51. Leaders don't create followers; they create more leaders. - Tom Peters

52. We cannot lead anyone farther than we have been ourselves. John C. Maxwell

53. The first job of leadership is to love people. Leadership without love is manipulation. - Rick Warren

54. Your work is to discover your work and then, with all your heart to give yourself to it. - Buddha

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. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

57. A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves. - Lao Tzu

58. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. - Napoleon Hill

59. We can, we will, and we must come together. - Joe Biden

60. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream. - Peter McWilliams

61. Good leaders build products. Great leaders build cultures. Good leaders deliver results. Great leaders develop people. Good leaders have a vision. Great leaders have values. Good leaders are role models at work. Great leaders are role models in life. - Adam Grant

62. There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all. - Peter F. Drucker

63. It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief. - Ernest Becker

64. Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers. - John Gardner

65. A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves. - Eleanor Roosevelt

66. Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy. - Paul Polman

67. 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

68. A leader is a dealer in hope. - Napoleon Bonaparte

69. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. - Harvey S. Firestone

70. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing. - Peter F. Drucker

71. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. - Ralph Nader

72. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. - Warren G. Bennis

73. There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier. - Charles F. Kettering

74. A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself. - Joel Barker

75. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. - John C. Maxwell

76. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. - Jack Welch

77. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. - Peter F. Drucker

78. Doing what is right isn't the problem. It is knowing what is right. - Lyndon B. Johnson

79. Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

80. Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Harold R. McAlindon

81. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. - Robert Louis Stevenson

82. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. - Bill Bradley

83. 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

84. The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example. - John Wooden

85. The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

86. 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

87. The leader has to be practical, and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. - Eric Hoffer

88. Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. - Brian Tracy

89. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. - Max Lucado

90. Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. - Tom Peters

91. Never give an order that can't be obeyed. - General Douglas MacArthur

92. No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. - Abraham Lincoln

93. What you do has a far greater impact than what you say. - Stephen Covey

94. Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power. - Seth Berkley

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

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

97. The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. - Ken Blanchard

98. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. - John C. Maxwell

99. I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. - Jimmy Dean

100. Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. - Vince Lombardi

101. There is little success where there is little laughter. - Andrew Carnegie

102. Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it. - Charles Swindoll

103. Don’t find fault; find a remedy. - Henry Ford

104. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. - Albert Einstein

105. 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

106. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. - William Arthur Ward

107. Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. - Robert Louis Stevenson

108. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein

109. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. - Dalai Lama

110. You manage things; you lead people. - Grace Murray Hopper

111. The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes. - Tony Blair

112. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. - Jack Welch

113. 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 de Pree

114. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult. - Warren Bennis

115. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. - Eleanor Roosevelt

116. 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

117. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. - Seth Godin

118. The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves. - Ray Kroc

119. Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. - Eleanor Roosevelt

120. 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

121. True leadership lies in guiding others to success--in ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do, and doing it well. - Bill Owens

122. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult. - Warren Bennis

123. Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it. - David Star Jordan

124. 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

125. 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

126. 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

127. You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go. - Jeanette Rankin

128. Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do but to achieve what they want to achieve. - Tom Landry

129. The role of leadership is to transform complex situations into small pieces and prioritize them. - Carlos Ghosn

130. Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead. - Pete Hoekstra

131. The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

132. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. - Ralph Nader

133. Earn your leadership every day. - Michael Jordan

134. As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. - Bill Gates

135. You cannot be a leader and ask other people to follow you unless you know how to follow, too. - Sam Rayburn

136. Those who let things happen usually lose to those who make things happen. - Dave Weinbaum

137. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. - Eleanor Roosevelt

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

139. Leadership is an ever-evolving position. - Mike Krzyzewski

140. You get in life what you have the courage to ask for. - Nancy D. Solomon

141. Leadership is an action, not a position. - Donald McGannon

142. 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.

143. 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

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

145. 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

146. Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency, and credit. - Jack Welch

147. A leader is best when people barely know he exists…when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves. - Lao Tzu

148. Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence. - Sheryl Sanberg,

149. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together. - Michelle Obama

150. Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. - Harold Geneen

This article is written by Braja Deepon Roy. He works as a Content Creator and Digital Marketer at Vantage Circle. He actively participates in the growth of corporate culture and keeps himself updated in this space. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com