Leadership Quotes

"The soldier is the army. No army is better than its soldiers."

- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

"The ‘eathen in ‘is blindness must end where ‘e began. But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man!"

- Rudyard Kipling

"Soldiers usually win the battles and generals get the credit for them."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy."

- Helvetius

"Discipline yourself, and others won’t need to."

- John Wooden

"Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you."

- John Wooden

"Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business."

- John Maxwell

"Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention."

- Deepak Chopra

"Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves."

- William Ellery Channing

"A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord."

- Kobe Bryant

"Emotions aren't the obstacles to a successful negotiation; they are the means."

- Christopher Voss

"Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you."

- John Wooden

"My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team."

- Don Shula

"The effectiveness of a leader is best judged by the actions of those he guides."

- Bill Courtney

"Great coaches use their expertise not to control but to inspire and empower their team to greatness."

- Vince Lombardi

"You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself."

- Robin Sharma

"People thrive on positive reinforcement. They can take only a certain amount of criticism and you may lose them altogether if you criticize them in a personal way…you can make a point without being personal. Don’t insult or belittle your people. Instead of getting more out of them you will get less."

- Bill Walsh

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence…if you’re in control, they’re in control."

- Tom Landry

"The essential tasks of the military leader, summarized by Dick Winters: I may not have been the best combat commander, but I always strove to be. My men depended on me to carefully analyze every tactical situation, to maximize the resources that I had at my disposal, to think under pressure, and then to lead them by personal example."

- Major Dick Winters

"Without a word this uniform also whispers of freezing troops, injured bodies, and Americans left forever in foreign fields. It documents every serviceman’s courage, who by accepting this uniform, promises the one gift he truly has to give: his life. I wear my uniform for the heritage of sacrifice it represents and more. I wear my uniform with pride, for it represents the greatest nation of free people in the world."

- Captain Karen Dorman Kimmel

"Good players inspire themselves, great players inspire others"

"Coaching is people management – getting people to do what you want them to do and like doing it."

""Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one.""

- Unknown

""I don’t look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.""

- Unknown

""Every leader needs to remember that a healthy respect for authority takes time to develop. It’s like building trust. You don’t instantly have trust, it has to be earned.""

- Unknown

""In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved.""

- Unknown

""Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box . . . . People set rules to keep from making decisions.""

- Unknown

""Visualize a wagon wheel as a complete team. A leader might be the hub of the wheel at the center.""

- Unknown

""A leader may be the most knowledgeable person in the world, but if the players on his team cannot translate that knowledge into action, it means nothing.""

- Unknown

""Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated.""

- Unknown