Quotes on Leadership By Famous Leaders

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

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.

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.