52 Inspiring Quotes for Aspiring Leaders

Whether you’re looking to grow your library of quotes or looking to push that last hour of work in the office, these quotes will help. I have hand-picked them in order to give you the best possible impact. These have inspired the masses over the years, and I wish you the best in reaching your goal of being part of the next generation of aspiring leaders.

1. “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”
—George Patton, General

2. “A leader is a dealer in hope.”
—Napolean Bonaparte

3. “You don’t need a title to be a leader.”
—Mark Sanborn

4. “To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.”
—Andre Malraux

5. “The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it too.”
—Steve Jobs

6. “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.”
—Ovid

7. “Leadership is influence.”
—John C. Maxwell

8. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche

9. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”
—Bill Bradley

10. “Earn your leadership every day”
—Michael Jordan

11. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
—John F. Kennedy

12. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt

13. “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”
—Aristotle

14. “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”
—Stephen Covey

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

16. “You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

17. “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
—Margaret Thatcher

18. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”
—Robert E. Lee

19. “Some leaders are born women.”
—Geraldine Ferraro

20. “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”
—Sheryl Sandberg

21. “Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
—Abraham Lincoln

22. “We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.”
—Whoopi Goldberg

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

24. “Together we are better.”
—John Paul Warren

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

26. “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”
—Benjamin Disraeli

27. “Every great leader can take you back to a defining moment when they decided to lead.”
—John Paul Warren

28. “When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others.”
—Kelley Armstrong

29. “Sheep are always looking for a new shepherd when the terrain gets rocky.”
—Karen Marie Moning

30. “I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.”
—Eugene V. Debs 

31. “Too many kings can ruin an army.”
—Homer

32. “There are two kinds of leaders, cowboys and Shepherds. Cowboys drive and Shepherds lead.”
—John Paul Warren

33. “When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter.”
—Winston Churchill

34. “Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.”
—Howard Gardner

35. “Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down.”
—Grace Murray Hopper  

36. “The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy.”
—Thomas Monson

37. “It’s not about you. It’s about them.”
—Clint Eastwood

38. “Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.”
—Seth Godin

39. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”
—Norman Schwarzkopf

40. “Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.”
—Reed Markham 

41. “If you want people to to think, give them intent, not instruction.”
—David Marquet

42. “How was your day? If your answer was ‘fine,’ then I don’t think you were leading.”
—Seth Godin

43. “Dominate in your domain; You can do it.”
—Jaachynma Agu

44. “Our greatest limitation isn’t the leader of the lives; it is the spirit within us.”
—John MacArthur

45. “Winners see the dream and develop plans while the rest see the obstacles and develop justifications.”
—Orrin Woodward 

46. “One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.”
—Larry Niven

47. “Some are born leaders, some achieve leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them. Which of these are you, or would you rather not bother?”
—Maurice Flanagan

48. “Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.”
—Tahir Shah

49. “Engage the enemy more closely.”
—Charles Faddis

50. “One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure.”
—Howard Schultz 

51. “Finally, the president added, ‘The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic…’”
—Bob Woodward

52. “There’s no such thing as a superhero, but together we can world in a new direction.”
—Biz Stone

I hope these help and support your missions to success!