Leadership is not just what happens when you're there, it's what happens when you're not there.

Ken Blanchard

A leader leads by example not by force.

Sun Tzu

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

John Quincy Adams

People are more easily led than driven.

David Harold Fink

The difference between a leader and a boss? The leader works in the open, the boss in covert. The leader leads, the boss drives.

Theodore Roosevelt

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

Rosalynn Carter

Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.

Ross Perot

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.

John Maxwell

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

Tom Landry

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Steve Jobs

There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.

Steve Jobs

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.

Seth Godin

Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.

Bill Hybels

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

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. What matters is how quickly the leader is able to adapt.

Tim Harford

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Dwight Eisenhower

If I look at the masses, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.

Mother Theresa

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.

Benjamin Franklin

Send a boy where he wants to go and you'll see his best pace.

Nigerian Proverb

I pointed out to you the stars and all you saw was the tip of my finger.

African Proverb  

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The first problem with all of the stuff that's out there on leadership is that we haven't got a clue what we're talking about. We typically think of the leader as being the person at the top. But if you define a leader as an executive, then you absolutely deny everyone else in an organization the opportunity to be a leader.

Peter Senge

If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.

Jack Welch

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

Walter Wriston

Schakers die plotseling iets zien, behoren gewoonlijk niet tot de topklasse.

Godfried Bomans

Your job is to touch everyone and get into their soul. Every moment you are in your office, you are useless.

Jack Welch

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."

General George Patton

The leader is best,
When people are hardly aware of his existence,
Not so good when people praise his government,
Less good when people stand in fear,
Worst, when people are contemptuous.
Fail to honor people, and they will fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who speaks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
The people say, 'We did it ourselves.'

Lao Tzu

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

John Buchan

A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.

Leroy Eimes

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

Colin Powell

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way

John Maxwell

To lead the people, walk behind them.

Lao Tzu

Our greatest challenge as leaders is not understanding the practice of leadership; it is practicing our understanding.

Marshall Goldsmith

People don't believe what you tell them They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change.

Seth Godin

Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there.  People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going.

Seth Godin

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Stephen Covey

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

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Warren Bennis

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Stephen R. Covey

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

Stephen Covey

Een leider doet zijn  werk het beste als de mensen nauwelijks weten dat hij er is. En minder goed als de mensen hem gehoorzamen en toejuichen. Hij doet zijn werk het minst goed als mensen hem verachten. Maar over een goede leider die weinig spreekt, zullen ze, als zijn werk is gedaan en zijn doel is bereikt, allemaal zeggen:‘We hebben het zelf gedaan’.

Lao Tse

Who is a leader? Anyone who has Followers.

Peter Drucker

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader.

George S. Patton

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

George S. Patton

Leadership is action, not position. 

Donald H. McGannon

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. 

Robert Jarvik

The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make weaknesses irrelevant.

Peter Drucker

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

Colin L. Powell