Leadership Quotes

"Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession."

- Clayton M. Christensen

"You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go."

- Jeannette Rankin

"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 concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."

- Colin Powell

"When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred."

- Niccolo Machiavelli

"If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Power without a nation's confidence is nothing."

- Catherine the Great

"The best thing you can do is learn from those mistakes so that you continue to get better. That's the management style or leadership style I believe in, which is push people to their limit such that they can become better than they thought they could be. That certainly has helped me."

- Lisa Su

"For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men."

- Isabel Allende

"The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill."

- Robert Heller

"Leadership is all about emotional intelligence. Management is taught, while leadership is experienced."

- Rajeev Suri

"There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."

- Fred Brooks

"You need to have a lot of human judgment involved in the financial industry in terms of risk management, in terms of investment decisions, and things that really allow us to blend the best of technology and the human brain."

- Adena Friedman

"What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide."

- W. Edwards Deming

"And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership."

- Steve Case

"The more senior your management position is, the more important it is to connect the organization or the project to the outside world. You know, how does this fit in with what we're doing? What is the real goal, the real mission?"

- Allan Mullaly

"To lead people, walk behind them."

- Lao Tsu

"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."

- Colin Powell

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born."

- Warren Bennis

"Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission."

- Colin Powell

"Effective management always means asking the right question."

- Robert Heller

"If we want children to become creative leaders then we must learn to follow their lead at an early age."

- Vince Gowmon

"The ultimate gift we can give the world is to grow our tiny humans into adult humans who are independent thinkers, compassionate doers, conscious questioners, radical innovators, and passionate peacemakers. Our world doesn’t need more adults who blindly serve the powerful because they’ve been trained to obey authority without question. Our world needs more adults who challenge and question and hold the powerful accountable."

- L.R. Knost

"An artist is like a prophet. He must lead people and help them get acquainted with what he sees."

- George Butendorp

"Those who choose, conduct, present, and accompany the music may influence the spirit of reverence in our meetings more than a speaker does."

- Boyd K. Packer

"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out."

- Ronald Reagan

"Ask the people who work in the warehouse to start thinking about safety, and on a regular, periodic basis, review and discuss how they might work better. I encourage people to put a meeting on a calendar, once a month, at least to come together for an hour or 90 minutes to discuss ideas for improvement."

- Joseph Flahiff

"If the owner or manager does not show an interest in preventing employee injury and illness, then the employees will probably not give it much thought either."

- Rhode Island Small Business Recovery Program

"Your employees learn by example. If they don’t see you practising good safety habits, they won’t think safety is important."

- Electrical Construction & Maintenance

"It takes leadership to improve safety."

- Jackie Stewart

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look."

- Unknown