Anyone can be trained as a manager, but true leadership is a skill that comes from within. It’s not easy to motivate and inspire, and in the fast-paced industry of product marketing we could all use a little time to reflect and take stock of where we're heading. To help you along that journey of self-reflection, we’ve compiled a list of 100 leadership quotes to live by - tweet them out to your followers, add them to a LinkedIn post, emblazon them across an A3 poster of a bald eagle in flight, they’re yours to do with as you please.
So, pull up a chair, pour yourself a coffee and take a little inspiration from leaders past and present, all while enjoying a whimsical gif or two.
- “Earn your leadership every day." - Michael Jordan
2. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
3. "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs
4. "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." - John F. Kennedy
5. “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
6. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker
7. "To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
8. “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
9. “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sanberg
10. “People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.” - Michelle Obama
11. “As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.” - Indra Nooyi
12. "Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders." - Tom Peters
13."Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion." - Oprah Winfrey
14. "Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work." - Seth Godin
15. "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
16. "The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.” - Sam Walton
17. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” - Sara Blakely
18. “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” - Vince Lombardi
19. “Leadership is the ability to guide others without force into a direction or decision that leaves them still feeling empowered and accomplished.” - Lisa Cash Hanson
20. “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
21. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time…so remember: great achievements take time, there is no overnight success.” - Leo Tolstoy
22. “Management is nothing more than motivating other people” - Lee Lacocca
23. “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
24. “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
25. "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
26. When you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you can see that the person critiquing you is merely trying to help.” - Fran Hauser
27. “Leadership is not a matter of talking but a manner of walking.” - Janna Cachola
28. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” - Albert Einstein
29. “Whistle while you work” - Snow white
30. “To lead people, walk behind them.” - Lao Tsu
31. “Those who let things happen usually lose to those who make things happen.” - Dave Weinbaum
32. "He who has great power should use it lightly." - Seneca
33. “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” - Seth Godin
34. “To add value to others, one must first value others.” - John C. Maxwell
35. "If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities." - Maya Angelou
36. “Increasingly, management’s role is not to organize work, but to direct passion and purpose.” - Greg Satell
37. Any idiot can point out a problem … A leader is willing to do something about it! Leaders solve problems!” - Tony Robbins
38. "I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people." - Mahatma Gandhi
39. “The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang." - Mary Kay Ash
40. "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm." - Publilius Syrus
41. "You get the best efforts from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." - Bob Nelson
42. "You get in life what you have the courage to ask for." - Nancy D. Solomon
43. “A leader is someone who creates infectious enthusiasm.” - Ted Turner
44. "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." - Alice Walker
45. "If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else." - Booker T. Washington
46. “A real leader faces the music even when he doesn't like the tune.” - Arnold H. Glasgow
47. "The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way." - Henry Miller
48. "A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
49. "Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together." - Jesse Jackson
50. "You get the best efforts from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within." - Bob Nelson
51. "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? - Benjamin Disraeli
52. "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
53. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." - Warren Bennis
54. "You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
55. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
56. "Leadership is intentional influence." - Michael McKinney
57. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. - Aristotle
58. “Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy – both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." - Michael Scott
59. Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” - Dianne Feinstein
60. “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” - Ralph Nader
61. "Leaders don't force people to follow - they invite them on a journey." - Charles S. Lauer
62. "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm." - Publilius Syrus
63. "Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." - Robert L. Stevenson
64. "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
65. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
66. “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
67. “So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.” - Peter Drucker
68. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” - Jim Rohn
69. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” - Max Lucado
70. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right–for you’ll be criticized anyway.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
71. “Education is the mother of leadership.” - Wendell Willkie
72. “He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.” - Solon
73. “A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.” - Charles de Gaulle
74. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller
75. “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.
76. “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” - Tina Fey
77. “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” - Nelson Mandela
78. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” - Norman Schwarzkopf
79. “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
80. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” - Albert Einstein
81. “If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.” - Barbara Greene
82. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin
83.“My father had a simple test that helps me measure my own leadership quotient: When you are out of the office he once asked me, does your staff carry on remarkably well without you?” - Martha Peak
84. “Power isn’t control at all, power is strength, and giving that strength to others. A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger; a leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own.” - Beth Revis
85. “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” - Robert McKee
86. “The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self~restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt
87. “The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.” - Ken Blanchard
88. “The leadership instinct you were born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.” - Elaine Agather
89. “The only way to do great work is to love the work you do.” - Steve Jobs
90. “There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life.” - Joseph Berber Lightfoot
91.“To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.” - Pat Riley
92. “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
93. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” - Bill Gates
94. “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
95. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.” - Chinese Proverb
96. “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” - Arnold Glasow
97. "To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
98. “There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage.” - Fuchan Yuan
99. “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” - Dwight Eisenhower
100. “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
