40 Leadership Quotes to Sticky Note your Life with

Have you ever wanted something so bad you could taste it? If you are starting a business venture, seeking a promotion, or your heart is racing in anticipation for that big job interview, you know what I mean.

You could lose sleep, forget to eat, and turn down happy hour or that concert on a “school night” to burn the midnight oil. Your friends are used to hearing, “things are just crazy right now” or “I am just so busy”.

You are working hard, but are you working smart? What do the best leaders do to ensure their eye is on the prize? And what is the prize long term?

Whether you are seeking more freedom and autonomy, more creativity in your career or just a lot more money, you want to learn what the best leaders do to avoid burn-out, and do it all for the reasons that drive you.

Sorry to tease you, but we won’t be able to offer guidance on all of those topics today…but LeadershipYOU is brewing up some pretty fantastic stuff when it comes to equipping self leaders. What do they do? Check here.

In the meantime, we thought we’d put together a tiny little list (it all relative) for you to get your toes wet with leadership quotes. What leadership traits do the best and brightest of history, and today’s greats say about leading well? Read on!

40 Strong and Timeless Leadership Quotes:

1. Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential.

Warren G. Bennis

2. Ultimately leadership is more about “being” than “doing.” As leaders grow personally, they increase their capacity to lead.

Henry and Richard Blackaby

3. Stop wondering if you’re good enough. Know you are, and start acting like it.

Simon Black

4. No one can predict to what heights you can soar. Even you will not know until you spread your wings.

Ray Bradbury

5. There is some work that will never be done if you don’t do it. There is someone who would miss you if you were gone. There is a place that you alone can fill.

Jacob Braude

6. Leaders are self-starters. They say, “Let’s go,” and lead. They don’t say, “Sic ’em,” and step back to watch the fighters do the work.

Paul “Bear” Bryant

7. Every human being is intended to have a character of his own, to be what no other is, to do what no other can do.

William Ellery Channing

8. Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

Lydia M. Child

9. You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be.

Robert Collier

10. The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.

Albert Einstein

11. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.

George Eliot

12. None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

13.  In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up, and goes.

John Erskine

14. I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Anna Freud

15. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

Theodore Seuss Geisel

16.  You’re irreplaceable. Without your voice, your passion, something is missing from the conversation. Whatever you bring, we need it. We need It’s true.

Holley Gerth

17.  What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it. What another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself – and thus make yourself indispensable.

André Gide

18. There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less.

Kurt Hahn

19. Those who can command themselves command others.

William Hazlitt

20. Somewhere in your make-up there lies sleeping, the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights, such as you may never have hoped to attain.

Napoleon Hill

21. Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them.

John Holt

22. Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.

Janis Joplin

23.  You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny.  The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand.

Irene C. Kassorla

24. A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.

Douglas MacArthur

25. There are powers inside of you, which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.

Orison Swett Marden

26.  A toolbox filled with screwdrivers is quite useless when you need a pipe wrench.

Lloyd Mattson

27.  Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

Golda Meir

28.  Cherish forever what makes you unique, cuz you’re really a yawn if it goes.

Bette Midler

29. No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

30. Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.

Norman Vincent Peale

31. One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment.

Robert E. Quinn

32.  Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.

Eleanor Roosevelt

33. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

34. The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

Gail Sheehy

35. Leadership cannot be bought. It cannot be conferred. It cannot be inherited. It knows no divine right, it cannot be passed on by any process of succession….It is acquired only by the personal mastery of each individual aspirant.

Sterling W. Sill

36. People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in.

Charles R. Swindoll

 

37.  All people are created with the equal ability to become unequal. Not everyone is equipped with the same talents, gifts or abilities. Each of us is created in a unique way. Our personalities are as diverse as the universe itself. Yet there is one constant: We can, by using what we have to the fullest, stand out from the crowd.

Glenn Van Ekeren

38.  Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.

Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

39. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

Jack Welch

40. Sometimes you have to step outside of the person you’ve been, and remember the person you were meant to be, the person you wanted to be, the person you are.H.G. Wells