Leadership Quotes

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world. - Noah Porter

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. - John Quincy Adams

He who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander. - Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm. - Publilius Syrus

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. - George Patton


Where there is no vision, the people perish.- Proverbs 29:18

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points. - Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer. - Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches.- Robert Burton

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. - Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed. - Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle. - Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved. - Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg. - James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small. - Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out. - Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there. - H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy. - Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. - Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce
Do not command. - Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place. - Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. - Friedrich Nietzsche


It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.) - Latin Proverb

Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself. - Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible. - Polybius