Leadership Quotes

Though I am always nervous of a sound bite especially in this day and age, I also believe that we should stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us, in order that we can see further than those before us.

The Executive Coaching Guru persona enables me to coach and work with top tier leadership teams, members of which very often have quotes that mean something powerful to them…I like to capture these leadership quotes; as they are often so powerful. If you have a quotation that you feel can add benefit, please let me know.

Adalai Stevenson
“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse”

• Ralph Nadar – “The function of leadership is to create more leaders not more followers”
• James Gordon – “It’s not that some people have will power and some people do not. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not”
• Andy Warhol – “They always say time changes things, but you have to change them yourself”
• Sir Bob Geldof - “I don’t want to be like you, I don’t want to think like you, I’m going to be like me”
• Laureate Wangari Maathai - “In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” She says “It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. We know they are wrong, we know we are right. So we must stand up for what we believe in.”
• Lao Tsu – “To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!”
• John F.Kennedy -”One person can make a difference and every person must try”
•  George S. Patton -”Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”
• J.W.Goethe - “I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element, it is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous…..”
• George S.Patton - “Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”
• John Gardener - “Most ailing organisations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot see their problems”
• Erich Fromm -”You have to stop in order to change direction” -
• John Welwood - “The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart”
• Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis  - “With good judgment, little else matters.  Without it, nothing else matters.”
• Clark Moustakas - “The individual increasingly comes to know who he is through the stand he takes when he expresses his ideas, values, beliefs and convictions, and through the declaration and ownership of his feelings”
• Warren Bennis - “Have some group that will tell you the truth and whom you can tell the truth. If you have people like that around you, what else matters”
• Vaclav Havel - “Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs”
• Edmund Burke - “All that is neccessary for the triumph of evil, is that good people do nothing”
• Father Theodore Hesburgh -”The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet”
• John Donahoe – “Leadership is a journey, not a destination. It is a marathon not a sprint. It is a process, not an outcome”
• Confucius - “To see what is right and not do it, is the want of courage”
• Vince Lombardi - “Bad habits are eliminated not by others, but by ourselves”
• Stephen Covey - “Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent”
• Henry Ford - “Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is a success!”
•  Lewis Carol -
  Alice: “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”
  Puss: ”That depends a great deal on where you want to go?”
  Alice: “I don’t much care where!”
  Puss: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” -
• Thomas Edison - “Vision without execution is hallucination”
• Jaime Irick(Western Zone Director of Sales for GE Homeland Protection) – “When you become a leader, your challenge is to inspire others, develop them and create change through them. You’ve got to flip that switch and understand that it’s about serving the folks on your team”
• Studs Terkel - “Most of us have jobs that are to small for our spirits”
• Harold Geneen -”Performance is your reality. Forget everything else. It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance  is reality”
• Narayana Murthy - “Leaders with principles are less likelty to get bullied or pushed around because they can draw clear lines in the sand”
• Ralph Waldo Emerson - “There is no truly great performance, without a little fanatism”
• Michael Gelb - “Over seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureacratic thinking. People who are serious committed to personal mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up”
• TS Eliot - “Only those who risk going too far, can possibly find out how far they can go”
• Winston Churchill - “To every person there comes in their lifetime that special moment when they are figurativey tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tradegy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for the work which could be their finest hour”
• Inscribed – on the temple wall at Delphi. Circa 6BC”Know Thyself”
• Benjamin Franklin - “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished”
• TE Lawrence - “All people dream, but unequally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake to find that their dreams are vanity. Dreamers of the day are dangerous people; they act out their dreams to make reality”
• Dwight Eisenhower -”You do not lead people by hitting them over the head – that’s assault, not leadership”
• Eleanor Roosevelt - “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”