147 Human Resources Quotes to Inspire Better Leadership and Employee Development

"Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don't want to."

- Richard Branson

"I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies."

- Lawrence Bossidy

"Human Resources isn't a thing we do. It's the thing that runs our business."

- Steve Wynn

"Nothing we do is more important than hiring people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not strategies."

- Lawrence Bossidy

"Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them; they're not just lying around on the surface."

- Ken Robinson

"Employees engage with employers and brands when they're treated as humans."

- Meghan Biro

"Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth."

- Russell Sarder

"You don't build a business. You build people, and people build the business."

- Zig Ziglar

"Great talent management is about finding, keeping, and growing the best people."

- Lou Adler

"To win the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace."

- Doug Conant

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."

- Max DePree

"If you're good to your staff when things are going well, they'll rally when things go bad."

- Mary Kay Ash

"True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do, and doing it well."

- Bill Owens

"Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves."

- Ken Robinson

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

- Peter Drucker

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

- Jack Welch

"Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders."

- Warren Bennis

"Developing talent is business's most important task—the sine qua non of competition in a corporate world."

- Peter Drucker

"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?"

- Thomas John Watson Sr.

"Ultimately, delivering strategy is about hiring the right people and motivating them to deliver results."

- Helen M. & P. Schubert

"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Aligning HR strategy with business strategy is the key to success."

- Jack Welch

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

- John C. Maxwell

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

- Ralph Nader

"Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example."

- Cory Booker

"Investing in your people is the best investment you can make."

- Indra Nooyi

"In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first."

- Lee Iacocca

"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay."

- Henry Ford

"In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what matters most to your people."

- Julie Bevacqua

"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want to fire somebody with his experience?"

- Thomas John Watson Sr.

"When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home."

- Betty Bender

"When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute."

- Simon Sinek

"Hire character. Train skill."

- Peter Schutz

"True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition."

- Frederick Herzberg

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

- Steve Jobs

"You can have the best strategy and the best building in the world, but if you don't have the hearts and minds of the people who work with you, none of it comes to life."

- Renee West

"If you fulfill the wishes of your employees, the employees will fulfill your visions."

- Amit Kalantri

"We recruit for attitude and train for skill."

- Atul Gawande

"Leadership is about giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work."

- Seth Godin

"Inventories can be managed but people must be led."

- Ross Perot

"Any idiot can point out a problem... A leader is willing to do something about it! Leaders solve problems!"

- Tony Robbins

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

- Walt Disney

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Talent management deserves as much focus as financial capital management."

- Jack Welch

"Talent management is essential to a company's future."

- Richard Branson

"Managing the right talent is critical to the success of any organization."

- Bill Gates

"Talent management is a business strategy and not just an HR initiative."

- Josh Bersin

"It's not about the quantity of people you hire; it's about the quality of people you hire."

- Simon Sinek

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."

- Anthony J. D'Angelo

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."

- BB King

"Believe you can and you're halfway there."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"Hire for passion and intensity; there is training for everything."

- Nolan Bushnell

"Development can help great people be even better - but if I had a dollar to spend, I'd spend 70 cents getting the right person in the door."

- Paul Russell

"Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can't tell you whether someone will fit into a company's culture."

- Howard Schulz

"Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success."

- Paul J. Meyer

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."

- Peter Drucker

"To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others."

- Tony Robbins

"When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective."

- Stephen Covey

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it."

- H.E. Luccock

"Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability."

- Patrick Lencioni

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."

- Phil Jackson

"You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins."

- Jim Stovall

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed."

- Napoleon Hill

"Allow people to be themselves. People want to be GREAT, great companies let them be GREAT."

- Arte Nathan

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."

- Booker T. Washington

"Time spent on hiring is time well spent."

- Robert Half

"Strategic human resource management is an investment that most certainly pays off."

- Peter Drucker

"HR leaders need to be thinking about strategy."

- Brian Kropp

"The best HR leaders are the ones who understand the business context."

- Dave Ulrich

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

- Nelson Mandela

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

- Warren Bennis

"Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth."

- Jesse Jackson

"Diversity: the art of thinking independently together."

- Malcolm Forbes

"If you do not intentionally include, you unintentionally exclude."

- Nellie Borrero

"Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance."

- Verna Myers

"The most powerful cultures are those that are based on values that are deeply held and widely shared."

- Jim Collins

"Every company has a culture. The only question is whether or not you decide what it is."

- Jason Fried

"A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation."

- Brian Chesky

"Every good conversation starts with listening."

- Tom Haak

"The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and intellectual capital are managed by human capital. You'd better get the human capital part right."

- Dave Bookbinder

"Growth and comfort do not coexist."

- Ginni Rometty

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives."

- President Theodore Roosevelt

"Resources are hired to give results, not reasons."

- Amit Kalantri

"Children imitate their parents, employees their managers."

- Amit Kalantri

"Management is nothing more than motivation other people"

- Lee Lacocca

"High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation."

- Charles F. Kettering

"In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way."

- Tina Fey

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."

- Michael Jordan

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

- John Cleese

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself."

- Henry Ford

"The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you."

- John Maxwell

"Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life."

- Brian Tracy

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur."

- Red Adair

"The most sacred thing I do is care and provide for my workers."

- Michael Scott

"I do deserve a vacation. Sometimes Batman's gotta take off his cape."

- Kevin Malone

"Without the right succession planning put to play in human resources, we build for the future without a future."

- Mmanti Umoh

"You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless they are willing to climb."

- Andrew Carnegie

"Your ability to communicate is an important tool in the pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers."

- Lee Brown

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

- George Bernard Shaw

"The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through."

- Sydney J. Harris

"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

- Epictetus

"For effective communication think about how is your speech is perceived than in what you are actually saying."

- Byron Rivers

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. The art of reading between the lines is a life long quest of the wise."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know."

- Jim Rohn

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he's hired to do."

- Malcolm Forbes

"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for the love of it."

- Henry David Thoreau

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."

- Arnold H. Glasow

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

- Mother Teresa

"Strategic HRM is about being different, it's about uniqueness."

- Dave Ulrich

"Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now."

- Alan Lakein

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning."

- Thomas Edison

"Every problem is a gift—without problems we would not grow."

- Anthony Robbins

"What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The war for talent is over, and talent won."

- Josh Bersin

"I am about to do something very bold in this job that I've never done before. Try."

- Jim Halpert

"We never listen when we are eager to speak"

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"Ensure your documentation is short and sharp and make much more use of people-to-people communication."

- Bentley and Borman

"Don't hire anyone you wouldn't want to run into in the hallway at three in the morning."

- Tina Fey

"Some people today are wandering generalities instead of meaningful specifics because they have failed to discover and mine the wealth of potentials in them."

- Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

"Without a plan, there's no attack. Without attack, no victory."

- Curtis Armstrong

"You can't teach employees to smile. They have to smile before you hire them."

- Arte Nathan

"I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university."

- Albert Einstein

"I will always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."

- Bill Gates

"There's an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job."

- Peter Drucker

"Recruiting is a contact sport."

- Barry Deutsch

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

- Albert Einstein

"Politeness is the poison of collaboration."

- Edwin Land

"Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'Would an idiot do that?' And if they would, I do not do that thing."

- Dwight Schrute

"The people that you work with are, when you get down to it, your very best friends."

- Michael Scott

"If there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most."

- Dwight Schrute

"Dating and hiring have a lot in common."

- Scott Wintrip

"If you have nothing to say, say nothing"

- Mark Twain

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

- William Shakespeare

"Be Sincere; be brief, be seated"

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Do not underestimate your abilities. That is your boss's job."

- Francis Young

"Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."

- Michael Scott

"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."

- Drew Carey

"Sometimes I'll start a sentence and I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way."

- Michael Scott

"I knew exactly what to do. but, in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do."

- Michael Scott

"I am running away from my responsibilities. And it feels good."

- Michael Scott

"It's never too early for ice cream, Jim."

- Michael Scott