quotations about leadership
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Essential Lippmann
He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Leading from the Lockers
Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through ... such is the basic method of leadership.
MAO ZEDONG
"Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership", Jun. 1, 1943
You know you're a good leader when people follow you out of curiosity.
COLIN POWELL
"10 Leadership Tenets from Colin Powell", Stanford Graduate School of Business
You aren't leading unless people are following.
RON EDMONDSON
"7 Times Leadership is at Its Best -- A Delicate Tension", Crossmap, April 18, 2016
That's what leadership is all about, identifying quality people, giving them the opportunity and experience to create and develop to continue to make the company successful. The best leaders identify and mentor potential leaders. A leader's most important legacy is the leaders he or she develops.
KENNETH E. STRONG & JOHN A. DICICCO
Leadership Is a Choice
The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.
KEN BLANCHARD
Leading at a Higher Level
Leadership is love made visible.
DARYA FUNCHES
attributed, Speak the Truth and Point to Hope
Because our desire for a coherent vision of the world is bottomless, our hunger for leadership is insatiable, too. Leaders make the world more sensible, but never sensible enough.
JOSHUA ROTHMAN
"Shut Up and Sit Down", The New Yorker, February 29, 2016
The first act of leadership is coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.
FENWICK W. ENGLISH
The Art of Educational Leadership
Leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated extraordinary things happen.
JAMES M. KOUZES & BARRY Z. POSNER
The Leadership Challenge
Leadership is the outward expression of our inner character.
DICK ABEL
The DNA of Leadership
Leadership is most effective when those acting in that capacity realize that their effect on others must be indirect. This indirectness means influencing others by changing yourself.
GREG ROBINSON & MARK ROSE
A Leadership Paradox
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The right man comes at the right time.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Today's leaders find the magic in their players.
STEVE CHANDLER & SCOTT RICHARDSON
100 Ways to Motivate Others
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
Good leadership is largely invisible.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can't be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time -- either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership