Inspirational Leadership Quotes

Change
“Change is the law of life - and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
- John F. Kennedy

“Organizational change always begins with a personal change.”
- Robert Quinn

“If you are going to try and change things, you had better have your wits about you.”
- Dorothy Day

“As quickly as the world is changing, the capacities needed by its leaders also change.”
- Ellen Van Velsor and Victoria Guthrie

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
- John F. Kennedy

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

Leadership and management
“Most US corporations today are over-managed and under-led. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership.”
- John Kotter

“What you cannot enforce, do not command.”
- Sophocles

“I am defining leadership in terms of the role, not the position.”
- Edgar Schein

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
- Peter Drucker

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein

“To find fault is easy: to do better may be difficult.”
- Plutarch

Servant leadership
“The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve.”
- Robert Greenleaf

“Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest.”
- Jesus

“Everybody can be great because everybody can serve…. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.”
- Kent M. Keith

“One thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.”
- Max DePree

Humility
“Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.”
- Jim Collins

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. Lay first the foundation of humility.”
- St Augustine

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
- Rick Warren

Empowerment
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done … they will say, ‘We did it ourselves’”.
- Lao-Tzu

“You don’t build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them.”
- Walt Disney

“No man will ever make a great leader who wants to do it all by himself or to get all the credit for doing it”
- Andrew Carnegie

People
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.”
- Indira Gandhi

“To make a system stronger, we need to make stronger relationships.”
- Margaret Wheatley

“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

“People make things happen. All the rest is just window dressing.”
- Oprah Winfrey

Vision

“The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
- Theodore Hesburgh

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”
- Japanese proverb

“Remarkable opportunities exist for those who would lead their enterprises and this country into a new kind of community- a cohesive community of healthy children, strong families, good schools, decent neighborhoods and work that dignifies the individual.”
- Frances Hesselbein

“Vision is composed of one part foresight, one part insight, plenty of imagination and judgment, and often, a healthy dose of chutzpah.”
- Burt Nanus

“I skate to where the puck is going to be.”
- Wayne Gretzky

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
- Sun Tzu

“A high profile, charismatic style is absolutely not required to successfully shape a visionary company.”
- James Collins and Jerry Porras

Mission

“A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.”
- Peter Drucker

“Passion is what gives sense to our life.”
- Dalai Lama

“Companies that succeed are driven by internal ambition. Stock price doesn’t drive them. Ambition and values drive them.”
- Sumantra Ghoshal

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
- Nelson Mandela

“For organizations, groups or families, soul is a bedrock sense of who we are, what we care about and what we believe in.”
- Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal

Wisdom

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Socrates

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
- Helen Keller

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
- Winston Churchill

“It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.”
- Warren Bennis

Persistence

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
- Confucius

“Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and re-evaluation.”
- Mark Twain

“A thousand mile journey begins with one step.”
- Zen saying

“Genius in one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
- Thomas Edison

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Leaders are not born; they are made. And, they are made just like anything else - through hard work.”
- Vince Lombardi

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
- Albert Einstein

Virtue

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
- Socrates

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
- Seneca

“Nothing great was ever done without much enduring.”
- St. Catherine of Siena

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.”
- Mother Teresa

“Honest, forward-looking, inspiring and competent: these remain the pre-requisites to developing ourselves globally as leaders.”
- James Kouzes and Barry Posne