40 best leadership quotes to inspire you and your team

A good line about leadership can stay with you and steer you through the moment you actually have to lead. The ones worth keeping usually come from people who did it under pressure and paid attention to what worked.

It's worth taking seriously, because the person in charge sets the weather for everyone else. Gallup found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in their team's engagement — more than pay, perks, or company policy.

The leadership quotes below are grouped by the challenge each one speaks to — vision, serving your team, influence, courage — so you can go straight to whatever you're working on.

Inspiring leadership quotes

The lines people reach for when they need a reason to keep leading well.

1. "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

2. "Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish." — Sam Walton

3. "A leader is a dealer in hope." — Napoleon Bonaparte

4. "Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work." — Vince Lombardi

5. "Earn your leadership every day." — Michael Jordan

6. "The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." — Ray Kroc

7. "Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves." — Stephen R. Covey

Quotes on leadership and vision

For the part of the job that's about naming where you're going.

8. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." — Warren Bennis

9. "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." — Steve Jobs

10. "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." — Bill Gates

11. "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." — John F. Kennedy, remarks prepared for the Dallas Trade Mart, 1963

12. "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." — Ralph Nader

13. "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." — Jack Welch

Best quotes about leadership and your team

Leadership seen from the side of the people being led.

14. "Leadership is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge." — Simon Sinek

15. "A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential." — Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

16. "Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." — Sheryl Sandberg

17. "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you." — Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art

18. "You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things." — Mother Teresa

19. "A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit." — Arnold H. Glasow

20. "No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it." — Andrew Carnegie

Best quotes on leadership and influence

When the point is to move people, not just manage tasks.

21. "The true measure of leadership is influence — nothing more, nothing less." — John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

22. "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." — Dwight D. Eisenhower

23. "Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." — Peter F. Drucker, Management, 1974

24. "Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible." — Colin Powell, My American Journey

25. "People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision." — John C. Maxwell

26. "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." — Margaret Thatcher

Leadership quotes about courage and hard times

For the decisions that cost something.

27. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." — Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

28. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

29. "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear." — Rosa Parks, Quiet Strength

30. "The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly." — Jim Rohn

31. "It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership." — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Short leadership quotes

The ones that fit on a sticky note.

32. "Leadership is action, not position." — Donald H. McGannon

33. "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." — Albert Schweitzer

34. "Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." — George S. Patton

35. "Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it." — M.H. McKee

36. "Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still." — Harry S. Truman

The best leadership quotes of all time

The lines that keep getting quoted because they keep being true.

37. "Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders." — Tom Peters

38. "The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example." — John Wooden

39. "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

40. "The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been." — Henry Kissinger

Four famous leadership quotes that aren't what they seem

These get passed around constantly with the wrong name attached, so they're worth knowing before you put one on a slide.

• "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader" lands on John Quincy Adams almost every time. It isn't in his diaries; the wording traces to Dolly Parton in 1997.
• "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things" gets credited to Peter Drucker. It was popularized by Stephen Covey in 1989 — Drucker's actual line is the one about efficiency and effectiveness, quoted earlier on this page.
• "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done" is handed to Theodore Roosevelt. The Theodore Roosevelt Center lists it as unverified.
• "A leader is best when people barely know he exists" gets quoted as fixed Lao Tzu. It's a loose modern rendering of the Tao Te Ching, and the wording shifts from one translation to the next.

Pick one and put it to work

Look again at the lines you stopped on and keep the one or two that match how you want to lead. A quote can pull you back toward that on a rough day, but the change comes from the practice behind it — taking the blame, sharing the credit, saying the hard thing plainly. That's the gap RiseGuide is built to close, turning expert thinking like this into short daily lessons you actually do. If this was useful, the collection of growth quotes is a fair next stop.