100 Inspirational Leadership Quotes to Motivate and Empower You

"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

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

- Steve Jobs

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

- Lao Tzu

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

- Ralph Nader

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

- John Maxwell

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things."

- Ronald Reagan

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Be the leader you wish you had."

- Simon Sinek

"A leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

- Nelson Mandela

"If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader."

- Dolly Parton

"Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position."

- Brian Tracy

"We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes—understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success."

- Ariana Huffington

"It's okay to admit what you don't know. It's okay to ask for help. And it's more than okay to listen to the people you lead–in fact, it's essential."

- Mary Barra

"Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence."

- Sheryl Sandberg

"The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them."

- John Maxwell

"Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge."

- Simon Sinek

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you're not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special."

- Bill Taylor

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet."

- Theodore M. Hesburgh

"A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better."

- Jim Rohn

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

- President John Quincy Adams

"Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work."

- Seth Godin

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

- Jack Welch

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F. Kennedy

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile."

- Vince Lombardi

"The hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself."

- Bill George

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

- Ralph Nader

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

- William A. Ward

"A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit."

- Arnold Glasow

"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

"Good leaders build products. Great leaders build cultures. Good leaders deliver results. Great leaders develop people. Good leaders have vision. Great leaders have values. Good leaders are role models at work. Great leaders are role models in life."

- Adam Grant

"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes."

- Peter Drucker

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that count."

- Winston Churchill

"The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision."

- Ken Blanchard

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."

- Albert Schweitzer

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What you do has far greater impact than what you say."

- Stephen Covey

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

- Peter Drucker

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things."

- President Ronald Reagan

"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand."

- Gen. Colin Powell

"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

"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful."

- Malala Yousafzai

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

- John C. Maxwell

"Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen."

- Michael Jordan

"One of the keys to good leadership is good followership."

- James Cameron

"The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion."

- Paulo Coelho

"Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future."

- Deepak Chopra

"Don't follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you."

- Margaret Thatcher

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you."

- Oprah Winfrey

"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."

- Woodrow Wilson

"One of the criticisms I've faced over the years is that I'm not aggressive enough or assertive enough or maybe somehow, because I'm empathetic, it means I'm weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong."

- Jacinda Ardern

"Every time you have to speak, you are auditioning for leadership."

- James Humes

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

- Warren Bennis

"Leadership is about the team—the culture they keep and embrace, it’s about empathy for your customers, clients, employees, and the communities where you do business, it’s about doing the right thing for the right reasons, being confident enough to take risks and responsible enough to think of those who your decisions and risks may affect."

- Kat Cole

"Don’t lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations."

- Ralph Marston

"The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance."

- Brian Tracy

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently."

- Warren Buffet

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult."

- Warren Bennis

"Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it."

- David Starr Jordan

"In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better."

- Harry S. Truman

"I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"A leader is a dealer in hope."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it."

- Andrew Carnegie

"I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had, I'd have done it a lot earlier."

- Oprah Winfrey

"I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal."

- Ben Carson

"Innovation does not entail having new ideas, but rather getting rid of old beliefs."

- Bertrand Piccard

"Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard."

- Robin Sharma

"Only if we understand will we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help will we all be saved."

- Jane Goodall

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."

- Dieter F. Uchtdorf

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Don't tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results."

- George S. Patton Jr.

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

- Helen Keller

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."

- Arnold Glasow

"I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail."

- Muriel Strode

"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected."

- Steve Jobs

"You are never too small to make a difference."

- Greta Thunberg

"You don’t get any medal for trying something, you get medals for results."

- Bill Parcells

"Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning."

- Denis Waitley

"A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example."

- Joe DiMaggio

"The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."

- Henry Kissinger

"Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing."

- Mary D. Poole

"If you don’t believe in yourself, why is anyone else going to believe in you."

- Tom Brady

"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success."

- Dale Carnegie

"The most effective way to do it is to do it!"

- Amelia Earhart

"Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives."

- Michelle Obama

"I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion."

- Alexander the Great

"Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve."

- Mary Kay Ash

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."

- Amelia Earhart

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done."

- Dale Carnegie

"A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together."

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"What do you really believe makes a difference in the company? For me it’s really clear. It’s about customers and employees. Everything else follows. If you take care of your customers and you have motivated employees, everything else follows."

- Anne M. Mulcahy

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

- Charles Darwin

"The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you."

- Indra Nooyi

"Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them."

- Diogenes of Sinope

"To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."

- Steve Prefontaine

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

"The main thing about being 'heroic' is helping others."

- Sarinya Srisakul

"You must figure out your own destination and the best route to get there because no one else knows the way."

- Nadia Comaneci

"Do not be afraid to make decisions. Do not be afraid to make mistakes."

- Carly Fiorina

"It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent."

- Madeleine Albright

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done."

- Bruce Lee

"I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through—then follow through."

- Edward Rickenbacker

"Instruction does much, but encouragement, everything."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

- Thomas Jefferson

"An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises."

- Mae West

"Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself."

- Gloria Steinem

"Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse."

- Tom Peters

"You can't change conditions. Just the way you deal with them."

- Jessica Watson

"Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan."

- John F. Kennedy

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."

- Mother Teresa

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."

- Publilius Syrus

"He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly."

- James Allen

"Champions keep playing until they get it right."

- Billie Jean King

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."

- Max Lucado

"If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it."

- Grace Hopper

"There is a troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done, than not done their own way, tho’ other ways very desirable."

- William Penn

"He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious."

- Sun Tzu

"What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds."

- Wayne Dyer

"It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction."

- Warren Buffett

"If a person is drowning, they must be rescued regardless of their religion or nationality."

- Irena Sendlerowa

"Leaders grasp nettles."

- David Ogilvy

"If you have to choose between an easy thing and a hard thing, the hard one's usually a lot more fun."

- Samantha Cristoforetti

"Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same."

- Condoleezza Rice

"If you're lucky enough to be different, don't ever change."

- Khoudia Diop

"Safe is the new risky."

- Kathy Klotz

"Never be afraid to be a poppy in a field of daffodils."

- Michaela Deprince

"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone."

- Gertrude Stein

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

"Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want."

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

"You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader."

"Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal."

"Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers."

"A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible."

"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves."

"A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

"Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well."

"To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’"

"Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish."

"One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution."

"Knowing what must be done does away with fear."

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control."

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."

"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."

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

"Don’t find fault, find a remedy."

"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful."

"It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."

"Leadership is something you earn, something you’re chosen for. You can’t come in yelling, ‘I’m your leader!’ If it happens, it’s because the other guys respect you."

"To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going."

"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"I learned that things are never as complicated as we imagine them to be. It is only our arrogance which seeks to find complicated answers to simple problems."

"The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it."

"If ‘leadership’ has come to be known as something much bigger than us, aligned to changing the world, then we are spending way too much time celebrating things that hardly anyone can do and not celebrating things we can do every day."

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there."

"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes."

"Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?"

"There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment."

"Leaders instill in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves. Positive leaders empower people to accomplish their goals."