Quotations on Leadership

GOLD Leadership Concepts

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is do those served grow as persons: do they while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society, will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?”

-Robert K. Greenleaf

“You take people as far as they go, not as far as you would like them to go.”

-Jeannett Rankin (1880-1973)
American politician, feminist, pacifist, 1st woman in US Congress

“A leader will never lack for legitimate excuses to explain away his breaches of faith. Modern history will furnish innumerable examples of this behavior, showing how the man succeeded best who knew best how to play the fox. But it is a necessary part of this nature that you must conceal it carefully; you must be a great liar and a hypocrite. Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”

-Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Italian statesman & political scientist of Renaissance

“Leadership is…a superb opportunity for reapplying, applying in new conditions, the simple rules of human conduct to which we always go back. Without leadership alert and sensitive to change, we are all bogged up or lose our way.”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)
32nd President of the US

“Leadership [is] the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

-Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)
34th President of the US

“The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears down to the ground.”

-Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Prime Minister of Great Britain

“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in others the conviction and the will to carry on.”

-Walter Lippmann (1819-1974)
American journalist & political writer

“As far as the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence; the next best, the people honor and praise; the next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate… When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ ”

-Lao-Tzu (500 BC)
Chinese philosopher; wrote book of Taosim

“Don’t agonize, organize.”

-Florence R. Kennedy
Former head of NOW’s legal division & founder of the US Feminist Party

“A leadership approach tends often unconsciously to be elitist… I describe leadership as no mere game among elitists, but as a structure of action that engages persons, to varying degrees… Only the inert, the alienated, and the powerless are unengaged. The processes of leadership must be seen as part of the dynamics of conflict and power. Leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders.”

-James MacGregor Burns (1918- )
Author of Leadership

“The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people.”

-Lenin (1870-1924)
Founder of the Communist Party in Russia

“And when we think we lead, we are most led.”

-Lord Byron (1788-1824)
English Poet

“A leader is useless when he acts against the promptings of his own conscience.”

-Gandhi (1869-1948)
Spiritual & political leader of India

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

-John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)
35th President of US

“If I were to try to read, much less answer all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.”

“I do the best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

-Abraham Lincoln
16th President of US

“Reason and judgment are all the qualities of a leader.”

Tacitus (AD 56-118)
Latin historian. Wrote about politics, politicians, military history

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening.”

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Early American civil rights leader

“I know my players better than they know themselves. How else could I get the best out of them?”

Bear Bryant
Football coach, University of Alabama

“Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers.”

“Most of what leaders have that enable them to lead is learned. Leadership is not a mysterious activity. It is possible to describe the tasks that leaders perform. And the capacity to perform those tasks is widely distributed in the population.”

John Gardner
Author of On Leadership and
public servant under four US Presidents

“You’ve got to want to be in charge.”

Attila the Hun (400 AD)

“Jazz-band leaders must choose the music, find the right musicians, and perform-in public. But the effect of the performance depends on so many things-the environment, the volunteers playing in the band, the need for everybody to perform as individuals and as a group, the absolute dependence of the leader on the members of the band, the need of the leader for the followers to play well. What a summary of an organization.”

Max DePree, author of
Leadership Is An Art

“Leadership…the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.”

Kouzes & Posner, authors of
The Leadership Challenge

“Leadership…a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good.”

Komives, Lucas, McMahon authors of Exploring Leadership

“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First, Think Win/Win, Seek First to Understand…Then to Be Understood, Synergize, and Sharpen the Saw.”

Stephen R. Covey, author of
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People & Principled-Center Leadership

“Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and collaborators who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.”

Joseph C. Rost, author of
Leadership for the Twenty-First
Century

“To achieve greatness, start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

Arthur Ashe
Tennis Champion & Philanthropist

“Leadership is no longer the province of the few, the privileged, or even the ambitious.”

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

“There are no office hours for leaders.”

Cardinal J. Gibbons