100+ Powerful Being a Leader Quotes to Inspire & Motivate

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“A leader sees the invisible and leads others to believe in it.” – John C. Maxwell

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.” – Ralph Marston

“If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything.” – John Wooden

“Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” – Tom Peters

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” – Jonathan Swift

“Great leaders think different, act different, and achieve different.” – Robin Sharma

“Don’t wait for opportunities, create them.” – George Bernard Shaw

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.” – Carl Jung

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

“It always seems impossible until it's done.” – Nelson Mandela

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” – Walter Elliot

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” – Thomas Edison

“Strength does not come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming what you once thought you couldn't.” – Rikki Rogers

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” – Robert Jordan

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” – Mary Anne Radmacher

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” – Maya Angelou

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas.” – Seth Godin

“The best leaders make people feel that they’re at the very center of things.” – Howard Schultz

“People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” – John C. Maxwell

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John C. Maxwell

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader

“Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” – John C. Maxwell

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

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan

“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” – Bill Bradley

“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.” – Stephen R. Covey

“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

“Leadership is earned moment by moment through honesty, integrity, and selflessness.” – Colin Powell

“Character is how you treat those who can do nothing for you.” – Dave Willis

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

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

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – C.S. Lewis

“Show me a person who never makes a mistake, and I'll show you someone who never accomplishes anything.” – General Marshall

“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” – Aristotle

“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

“Trust is built when someone is vulnerable and isn’t exploited.” – Ernest Guillot

“A man is judged by his deeds, not by his intentions.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody will know whether you did or not.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis

“Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.” – John Wayne

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” – Plato

“Sometimes the person who makes the most difference is the one who dares to do something.” – Simon Sinek

“The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” – Kenneth Blanchard

“If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” – Mark Twain

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

“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

“Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right.” – Peter F. Drucker

“The hardest thing about the power of love is surrendering to it.” – Unknown

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem

“Great leaders are willing to make decisions that are unpopular in the moment but right for the long term.” – Simon Sinek

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.” – Simon Sinek

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve.” – Robert K. Greenleaf

“The highest form of leadership is leading by love.” – Myles Munroe

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John C. Maxwell

“He who wishes to lead must first serve.” – Lao Tzu

“The essence of leadership is not power. It is service.” – Billy Graham

“You get greatness when you give everything away.” – Bob Chapman

“Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected.” – Marian Anderson

“To add value to others, you must first value others.” – John C. Maxwell

“Service is the rent we pay for being.” – Shirley Chisholm

“Great leaders elevate others. They don’t climb over people; they lift them up.” – Robin Sharma

“Change is the only constant in life.” – Heraclitus

“The innovator’s dilemma is not whether to innovate, but how to think differently.” – Clayton Christensen

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” – Mark Zuckerberg

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” – Peter Drucker

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” – Woodrow Wilson

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it is getting.” – W. Edwards Deming

“Disruption is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.” – Reid Hoffman

“The only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than the competition.” – Arie de Geus

“Speed of execution beats perfection.” – Reid Hoffman

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” – Ken Blanchard

“Collaboration allows teachers to capture each other’s fund of collective intelligence.” – Mike Schmoker

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.” – Andrew Carnegie

“Unity is strength. When there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” – Mattie Stepanek

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

“Collaboration is the secret ingredient that makes creative magic happen.” – Tina Roth Eisenberg

“Your EQ is more important than your IQ.” – Daniel Goleman

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes.” – Daniel Goleman

“Leadership is not about being boss. It’s about being responsible.” – Simon Sinek

“Self-awareness is the first step in leading yourself effectively.” – Bill George

“The ability to pause and reflect is one of the most powerful tools of emotional intelligence.” – Susan David

“We need to feel felt to regulate, relate, and reason.” – Dan Siegel

“Emotional intelligence accounts for nearly 90% of what sets high performers apart.” – TalentSmart

“Leadership is the capacity to calm chaos and create clarity.” – Unknown

“Managing your emotions is a sign of strength, not weakness.” – Brené Brown

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership.” – Warren Bennis

“Listening is often the most powerful act of leadership.” – Peter Drucker

“Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” – Maya Angelou

“A legacy is not leaving something for people. It’s leaving something in people.” – Peter D. Hart

“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand

“The greatest legacy one can pass on is not money or material things, but a legacy of character and faith.” – Billy Graham

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

“Your legacy is every life you touch.” – Roy T. Bennett

“Purpose is the reason we strive, the source of our resilience, the core of our identity.” – Victor Frankl

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” – Pericles