Leadership quotes
3.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside leadership — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himselfremained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat."
"Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual:Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute."
"Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That's because leadership has two sides- what a person is character and what a person does- competence."
"Leadership is communicating people's worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it themselves."
"We're looking forward to a great season at the University of California - if we find a way to put cleats on their sandals."
"The inevitable end of multiple chiefs is that they fade and disappear for lack of unity."
"Leaders have to be dealers in hope."
"Be the chief but never the lord."
"The group will not prosper if the leader grabs the lion's share of the credit for the good work that has been done."
"Superior leaders get things done with very little motion. They impart instruction not through many words, but through a few deeds. They keep informed about everything but interfere hardly at all. They are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit. And, because they take no credit, credit never leaves them."
"The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'"
"Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves."
"Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it."
"The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now"
"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."
"I don't yell at people, I don't mistreat people. I don't talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it."
"How you spend your time defines who you are."
"It's fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn't make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, "Oh yeah, this stuff is good.""
"Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob."
"A leader should be a visionary and have more foresight than an employee."
