23 leadership quotes applied to business

This is a round-up of my favourite leadership quotes. Some say a little and some say a lot, but in their day they were undoubtedly the philosophy needed to motivate and inspire groups of people large and small, and even armies.

1. 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

2. A good plan violently executed today is probably better than a perfect plan executed next week – George Patton

3. To handle yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart – Eleanor Roosevelt

4. The mediocre teacher talks; the good teacher explains; the superior teacher demonstrates; the great teacher inspires – William Arthur Ward

5. Every person’s chief wish is for someone to inspire them to become what they know they could be – Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others – Robert Louis Stevenson

7. Ultimately, leadership is the art of getting someone to do something you want done because they want to do it – Dwight D. Eisenhower

8. Victory has a hundred fathers, while defeat is usually an orphan – John F. Kennedy

9. Example is not the most important thing in influencing others; it is the only thing – Albert Schweitzer

10. Leadership is not about titles, positions or a place on the organisation chart. It is about one life influencing others – John C. Maxwell

11. A leader is a dealer in hope – Napoleon Bonaparte

12. I cannot trust a man to control other people when that man is unable to control himself – Robert E. Lee

13. The day your people stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have lost confidence. That is a failure of leadership – Colin Powell

14. There is a big difference between being a boss and being a leader. Both roles rest on authority, but a boss demands blind obedience, while a leader earns authority through understanding and trust – Klaus Balkenhol

15. A leader exists for a reason, and the reason is to hand out torches so people can find their way through the darkness – Whoopi Goldberg

16. A leader is not someone who forces others to make them stronger. A leader is someone willing to give their strength to others so that they have what they need to stand on their own – Beth Revis

17. A leader always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason – J.P. Morgan

18. If you spend your whole life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything – Tom Rath

19. Remember that behind every successful product or business, someone once made a very brave decision and took an enormous risk – Peter F. Drucker

20. A leader can take people where they would never have dared to go on their own – Hans Finzel

21. A good leader is like the conductor of an orchestra: to lead the orchestra well, he has to turn his back on the crowd – Steve Jobs

22. The premise of every leader should be to produce not more followers, but more leaders – Ralph Nader

23. An excellent leader is one who always takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit – John Maxwell

Further reading

• 7 management strategies for business from history’s greatest generals
• 29 strategies of war for winning in business

Featured image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.