“Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.” James MacGregor Burns
“Courage is the ‘x’ factor that can make or break corporate America” Warren Bennis
“Leadership is taking people to places they’ve never been before.” Marie Kane
“Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement.” C. F. Rauch and O. Behling
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, it’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Winston Churchill
“The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. Leaders, followers, and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership.” Garry Wills
“Great leaders rally people to a better future.” Marcus Buckingham
“Leadership is enacted through communication” J. K. Barge
“I don’t like to boss people around. I don’t get motivated by telling people what to do, I don’t take any pleasure in it. So, I manage with curiosity by asking questions.” Brian Grazer
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” Ernest Hemingway
“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.” Abraham Lincoln
“Difficulties exist to be surmounted.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The fundamental purpose of leadership is to produce useful change, especially non-incremental change.” John Kotter
“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a
group of individuals to achieve a common goal.” Peter Northouse
“When you hire people who are smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are.” R.H. Grant
“Leadership is successfully creating positive change for the common good.” Todd Sorensen et al.
“He who moves not forward goes backward.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.” Edward R. Murrow
“Communication is the most important skill any leader can possess.” Richard Branson
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin
“Great leaders drive change.” Jeff Immelt
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Socrates
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” Socrates
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” Socrates
“What is an intelligent man? A man who enters with ease and completeness into the spirit of things and the intention of persons, and who arrives at an end by the shortest route.” Henry Frédéric Amiel
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” Socrates
“To find yourself, think for yourself.” Socrates
“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 Exupéry
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” George S. Patton
“Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline … Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive discipline and sternness in command result in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a leader.” Jia Lin
“The measure of a man is what he does with power.” Plato
“Leadership is not a ‘mystical or ethereal concept’. Rather, leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Certainly, leaders make a difference. There is no question about that.” Bernard Bass
“There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept” Stogdill
“the process (act) of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement” Stogdill (1950)
“interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals” Tannenbaum, Weschler, and Massarik (1961)
“Leadership requires using power to influence the thoughts and actions of other people” Zaleznik (1977)
“Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” Plato
“the process of moving a group (or groups) in some direction through mostly non-coercive means” Kotter (1988)
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon Bonaparte
“leadership is an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring or restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of members…Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in the group. Any member of the group can exhibit some amount of leadership…” Bass (1990)
“A leader shapes and shares a vision which gives point to the work of others” Handy (1992)
“Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes” Rost (1993)
“Leadership is the capacity to create a compelling vision and to translate vision into organizational realities” Bennis(1995)
“The only definition of a leader is someone that have followers” Drucker (1996)
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein
“Leadership is the process of interactive influence that occurs when, in a given context, some people accept someone as their leader to achieve common goals” Silva (2016)
“there is too much mathematics and not enough wisdom” Maurice Godelier
“from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule” Aristotle
“A gentleman first wins the trust of his people, and then he can mobilize them. Without this trust, they might feel they are being ill-used. He first wins the trust of his prince, and then he may offer criticism. Without this trust, the prince might feel he is being slandered” Confucius
“The qualities of social leaders are wind, the qualities of the common people are grass; grass will always bend in the wind” Confucius
“Cultivated people seek from themselves; small people seek from others” Confucius
“The concept of a leader cannot be defined independently of what a ‘good’ leader is expected to accomplish.” Kodish
“A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.” Pericles
“I don’t know any other way to be than a leader by example.” Fat Joe, rapper
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” Jack Welch
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” Warren Bennis
“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.” Ronald Reagan
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
“We run this company on questions, not answers.” Eric Schmidt
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Warren Bennis
“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” General George Patton
“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” Ken Kesey
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Peter Drucker
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” John F. Kennedy
“I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.” Queen Elizabeth II
“When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.” Napoleon Bonaparte
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” John C. Maxwell
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” Ken Blanchard
“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” John Maxwell
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” Theodore Roosevelt
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” Jim Rohn
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.” Herbert Swope
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
“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-Exupéry
“I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” Estée Lauder
“I have no special talents, I am only passionately curios.” Albert Einstein