Leadership Quotes

The following quotes are offered as a way of conveying that leadership, by it's nature, is full of paradoxes and ambiguityies. It's not like a marketing or accounting textbook where almost all the professors say about the same thing. It's a complicated phenonmena difficult to understand, let alone act on.

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Leadership Quote 1

If you fail to honor your people,
They will fail to honor you;
It is said of a good leader that
When the work is done, the aim fulfilled,
The people will say, "We did this ourselves.

Lao Tzu, , 604-531 B. C., Founder of Taoism, Tao Te Ching

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Leadership Quote 2

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Kenneth Blanchard, University of Massachusetts, Schatz, Managing By Influence, (Prentice-Hall, 1986)

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Leadership Quote 3:

Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work.

Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970, Professional football coach

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Leadership Quote 4:

A tale is told of a man in Paris during the upheaval in 1948, who saw a friend marching after a crowd toward the barricades. Warning him that these could not be held against the troops, that he had better keep way, he received this reply, " I must follow them. I am their leader."

A Lawrence Lowell, 1856-1943, President of Harvard University,

Conflicts of Principle

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Leadership Quote 5

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

Anonymous

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Leadership Quote 6

"To lead, one must follow."

Lao Tzu, 604-531 B. C., Founder of Taoism, Tao Te Ching

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Leadershiop Quote 7

A leader has to appear consistent. That doesn't mean he has to be consistent.

James Callahan, English Prime Minister, Harvard Business Review, November/December 1986

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Leadership Quote 8

The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.

John C Maxwell: The 17th Irrefutable Laws of Teamwork (2001, 185)

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Leadership Quote 9

"The view only changes for the lead dog."

Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Radio Program, 1950s

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Leadership Quote 10

"Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it."

Henry Mintzberg, McGill University School of Management, The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973

Leadership Quote 11

"Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men."

Lao Tze

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Leadership Quote 12

"A leader is a man who makes decisions. Sometimes they turn out right and sometimes then turn out wrong; but either way, he makes them."

Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co., Leaders are Made . . . Not Born, Leadership in the Office (AMACOM, 1963)

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Leadership Quote 13

"The productivity and competitive problems American manufactures face result from ineffective top management, petrified in place, unwilling to accept change, failing to provide vision and leadership."

Phillip Alspach, President, Intercom, Inc., Harvard Business Review, November/December 1986

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Leadership Quote 14

"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 you staff carry on remarkable well without you?"

Martha Peak, Group Editor, AMA Magazines, Management Review, October 1992

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Leadership Quote 15

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow a weak trumpet."

Theodore Hesburgh, President, Nortre Dame University, Time, May 1987

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Leadership Quote 16

"There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant."

Liu Shao-chi

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Leadership Quote 17

"All organizations do change when put under sufficient pressure. This pressure must be either external to the organization or the result of very strong leadership."

Bruce Henderson, CEO, Boston Consulting Group, Inc, Henderson on Corporate Strategy (Abit, 1979)

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Leadership Quote 18

"Leadership has been defined as the ability to hide your panic from others"

 Anonymous

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Leadership Quote 19

"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, American President

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Leadership Quote 20

"Rough waters are truer tests of leadership. In calm water every ship has a good captain."

—Swedish proverb

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For More Leadership Quotes. . .

See The Luge Man