The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Tony Blair

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker

Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.
Edwin H. Friedman:

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
John C. Maxwell

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

Leaders aren’t born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
Vince Lombardi

The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they eventually surpass him or her in knowledge and ability.
Fred A. Manske, Jr.

Whoever is providing leadership needs to be as fresh and thoughtful and reflective as possible to make the very best fight.
Faye Wattleton

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Peter F. Drucker

Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
H. Ross Perot

Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.
Max Depree

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. . . . The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Walter Lippmann

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
Bishop Desmond Tutu

Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.
Robert Half

The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he/she wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt

When team members regard each other with mutual respect, differences are utilized and are considered strengths rather than weaknesses. The role of the leader is to foster mutual respect and build a complementary team where each strength is made productive and each weakness irrelevant.
Stephen Covey

Listening to the inner voice – trusting the inner voice – is one of the most important lessons of leadership.
Warren Bennis

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.
Lewis H. Lapham

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

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.
Max DePree

Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
John Naisbitt

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasgow

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.
Jesse Jackson

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Ken Blanchard

A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.
Robert Townsend

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Ralph Nader

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

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.
Liu Shao-ch’i

The goal of an effective leader is to recondition your team to be solution focused rather than problem focused.
Jim Rohn

As a leader, you set the tone for your entire team. If you have a positive attitude, your team will achieve much more.
Colin Powell

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, ‘Go!’ – a leader says, ‘Let’s go!
E.M. Kelly

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

Leaders don’t force people to follow—they invite them on a journey.
Charles S. Lauer

Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.
Warren Bennis

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
John Maxwell

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

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

Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

There are many elements to a campaign.Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.
Bernd Brecher

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
John F. Kennedy

Lead, Follow – or get the hell out of the way
Ted Turner

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore M. Hesburgh

Make heroes out of the employees who personify what you want to see in the organization.
Anita Roddick

A leader who develops others, adds; a leader who develops leaders, multiplies.
Unknown

To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.
Mark Twain

The leader is a teacher who succeeds without taking credit. And, because credit is not taken, credit is received.
Lao Tzu

Every now and then, a leader ought to look back to see if anyone is following.
Unknown

A great leader never sets himself above his followers except in carrying responsibilities.
Jules Ormont

The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.
Jim Loehr