75 of the Most Inspirational Leadership Quotes

Sometimes all the inspiration you need to guide your team successfully can be found in a few simple words of wisdom.

No one can deny the power of a good quote. They motivate and inspire us to be our best.

Tweet them, share them, but most importantly, use them to help you become an even better leader than you already are.

Here are 75 of our absolute favourites:

1. A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.” —bJohn Maxwell
2. There are three essentials of leadership: humility, clarity, and courage.” — Unknown
3. I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.” — Unknown
4. “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” — Unknown
5. “My responsibility is getting all my players playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back.” — Unknown
6. “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” —George Patton
7. “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” —Dwight Eisenhower
8. “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.” —Dwight Eisenhower
9. “Earn your leadership every day.” — Unknown
10. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
11. “You don’t need a title to be a leader.” — Multiple Attributions
12. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” — John Maxwell
13. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” —Theodore Roosevelt
14. “Leadership is influence.” —John C. Maxwell
15. “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
16. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” —Warren Bennis
17. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” —Aristotle Onassis
18. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
19. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand
20. “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
21. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” —Vincent Van Gogh
22. “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, former U.S. Secretary of State
23. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” —President Abraham Lincoln
24. “You manage things; you lead people.” — Grace Murray Hopper
25. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward
26. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” — President John Quincy Adams
27. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” — Unknown
28. “In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.” – John Erskine
29. “The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.” – George Orwell, author
30. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” —Farrah Gray
31. My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. —General Montgomery
32. “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” —Dalai Lama
33. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”— Unknown
34. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” — Stephen Covey
35. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” — Henry Ford
36. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker
37. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” —Amelia Earhart
38. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”— Unknown
39. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
40. 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
41. “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”— Unknown
42. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. —Peter Drucker
43. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. —Margaret Mead
44. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”— Unknown
45. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. — General George Patton
46. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
47. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” —Helen Keller
48. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” — John Lennon
49. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
50. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” —George Addair
51. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” —Plato
52. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford
53. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” —Vince Lombardi
54. “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.” —Charles Swindoll
55. “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.” —Oprah Winfrey
56. “Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
57. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” —Jimmy Dean
58. I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? —Benjamin Disraeli
59. You manage things; you lead people. —Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
60. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” —Audrey Hepburn
61. Where there is no vision, the people perish. —Proverbs 29:18
62. “Nothing will work unless you do.” —Maya Angelou
63. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” —Jack Welch
64. “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
65. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
66. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” —Les Brown
67. “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Unknown
68. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. —Peter Drucker
69. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. —Publilius Syrus
70. When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out. —Napoleon Bonaparte
71. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —Mark Twain
72. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” —Michael Jordan
73. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” —Theodore Roosevelt
74. “The time is always right to do what is right.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. 
75. “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” —Booker T. Washington