The 77 Best Quotes to Inspire Leadership in Hard Times

Photo by May on Unsplash

Photo by May on Unsplash

“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

In times of duress and difficulty, it is imperative for leaders to rise from the shadows and steer the people into a future of possibility and hope. Leadership is not always assigned, rather it is clarified in times of trial. As John Kenneth Galbraith said, leadership is the confrontation of the major anxiety of their people in their time.

These days are perhaps the greatest window for leadership many of us have seen in our lifetime. On the back-end of difficulty is the opportunity. Not exploitative opportunity, as some may attempt, but the opportunity to see sparks of courage, wisdom, innovation, and character take hold and fan into flame, fueled by a crisis and the need for steady and strong men and women to stand against the tide of incoming despair.

Leadership isn't an identical idea. It is iterative in nature and innovative in expression. It is the ground upon which history is written and it is the call of greatness within each soul. As the Count of Monte Cristo once toasted the young Albert,

“Life is a storm my young friend, you will bask in the sunlight one moment be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into the storm as you shout... do your worst for I will do mine.”

For anyone aspiring to be a leader during these days, here are 77 of the best leadership quotes that will inspire and push you towards raising your voice in that solemn and spectacular fashion as you yell, “do your worst, for I will do mine.”

Greatness

  1. “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” — Woodrow Wilson

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

  3. “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through — then follow through.” — Edward Rickenbacker

  4. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” — Jim Rohn

  5. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.” — Peter F. Drucker

  6. “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” — Benjamin Franklin

  7. “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

  8. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” — Brian Tracy

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

  10. “The price of greatness is responsibility.” — Winston Churchill

  11. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

  12. “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward

  13. “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

  14. “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” — Dale Carnegie

  15. “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” — John Buchan

Bravery

16. “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

17. “The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.”– Seneca

18. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” — Nancy D. Solomon

19. “The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, distubances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.” — Margaret Wheatley

20. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

21. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” — Publilius Syrus

22. “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”―Mary Anne Radmacher

23. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller

24. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

25. “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

26. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

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

28. “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

Empowerment

29. “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

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

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

32. “When people talk, listen completely.” — Ernest Hemingway

33. “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

35. “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” -Ralph Nader

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

37. “You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” — Sam Rayburn

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

39. “You manage things; you lead people.” — Grace Murray Hopper

40. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” — Jack Welch

41. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” — Peter F. Drucker

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

43. “Real leadership is leaders recognizing that they serve the people that they lead.” — Pete Hoekstra

44. “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

Vision

45. “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.” — Leroy Eimes

46. “Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” — George S. Patton Jr.

47. “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” — Warren Bennis

48. “One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” — Arnold Glasow

49. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

50. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” — Warren G. Bennis

51. “There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.” — Charles F. Kettering

52. “The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision.” — Ken Blanchard

53. “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

54. “A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself.” — Joel Barker

55. “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.” — Walter Lippman

Character

56. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln

57. “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” — Ray Kroc

58. “Leaders don’t inflict pain, they share pain.” — Max Depree

59. “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” — Arnold Glasow

60. “Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.” — David Star Jordan

61. “The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

62. “Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.” — Diogenes of Sinope

63. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” — John C. Maxwell

64. “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”―Haruki Murakami

65. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” — Aristotle

66. “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

67. “Things turn out the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” — John Wooden

INNOVATION

68. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs

69. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” — Henry Ford

70. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

71. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” — Max Lucado

72. “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.” — Nelson Mandela

73. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Harold R. McAlindon

74. “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” — Edith Wharton

75. “The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.” — Carlos Ghosn

76. “Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” — Orrin Woodward

77. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” — Colin Powell

The majority of these quotes were pulled from an article by Lolly Daskal published on inc.com.

Other quotes were found at the following sources below.

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