Leadership can be a lonely and isolated place, particularly in turbulent times. Even the greatest leaders throughout history, have occasionally been found searching for inspiration in moments of great change or difficulty. No matter how large your business, we all find the need to dig deep from within ourselves in search of both motivation and inspiration. So today I thought that I would give you a helping hand, by offering up my thirty favourite leadership quotes, as follows :-
1) “Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men – the other 999 follow women” Groucho Marx
2) “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others” Robert Louis Stevenson
3) “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” Eleanor Roosevelt
4) “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires”. William Arthur Ward
5) “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
6) “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Peter F. Drucker
7) “Example is not the main thing in influencing. It is the only thing.” Albert Schweitzer
8) “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another”. John C. Maxwell
9) “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off” Colin Powell
10) “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” Steve Jobs
11) “Do you know one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?” Margaret Thatcher
12) “A great leader is a dealer in hope”. Napoleon
13) “I don’t see myself as being special; I just see myself as having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, and to have the answers”. Tupac Shakur
14) “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself”. Robert E. Lee
15) “You get in your life what you have the courage to ask for”. Nancy D. Solomon
16) “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are”. Max De Pree
17) “The best executive 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
18) “Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: I stand for consensus?”. Margaret Thatcher
19) “If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing”. Brad Szollose
20) “Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through”. Jarod Kintz
21) “No guts, no story”. Chris Brady
22) “I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: try to please everybody”. Herbert Bayard Swope
23) “A person always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason” J P Morgan
24) “If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything” Tom Rath
25) “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better”. Steve Jobs
26) “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm”. Publilius Syrus
27) “When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter.” Winston Churchill
28) “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Peter F. Drucker
29) “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision”. John Maxwell
30) “Earn your leadership everyday” Michael Jordan
The above list was compiled by Peter Nicholls CEO of Ideology Consulting. For more information on ideology consulting, go to www.ideologyconsulting.co.uk .