One of these will transform you today.
In my mobile app, Pocket Mentor, a daily guide that helps leaders avoid pitfalls and seize opportunities, I share road-tested advice, been there done that expertise, and cutting edge research that helps leaders grow every day.
Peppered throughout are quotations that have inspired me as I’ve launched my companies, nonprofits, mentored leaders, served on numerous boards, published articles, and raised our children.
I can’t count how many times I’ve faced a challenge or set-back when the right words transformed my mindset and changed my trajectory from discouragement to determined, from self-defeated to one step closer to success.
Here, I share the ones that have most profoundly inspired me, ignited new paths of thinking, and encouraged me when I failed.
These are my top 88 leadership quotes of all time, with some of my ideas on why they are important – I hope these inspire you today.
“First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.” – A Bug’s Life
“Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” – Dr. Margaret Mead
“Far and away the best prize life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“We’re willing to fall because we’ve learned how to rise.” – Brene Brown
“I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” – Virginia Rometty
“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
“Let your need for clarity be the reason you lean into confusion.” – Dan Rockwell
“This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” – Psalm 118:24
“Good leaders organize and align people around what the team needs to do. Great leaders motivate and inspire people with why they’re doing it. That’s purpose. And that’s the key to achieving something truly transformational.” – Marillyn Hewson
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.” – WT Shedd
“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” – Winston Churchill
“No great cause is ever lost or won, the creeds must be restated, and the battle renewed.” – John Buchan
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” -Mark Twain
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn
“My best successes came on the heels of failures.” – Barbara Corcoran
“You manage things; you lead people.” – Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” – Max DePree
“It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K Rowling
“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” – Tony Blair
“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” – Stephen Covey
“Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed… Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.” – Sheryl Sandberg
“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” – John Maxwell
“Earn your leadership every day.” – Michael Jordan
“Success is 15 percent due to professional knowledge and 85 percent due to the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people.” – Andrew Carnegie
“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakley
“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
“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” – Sheryl Sandberg
“If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.” – Melinda Gates
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” – Madeleine Albright
“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” – Mother Teresa
“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.” – Anonymous
“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” – John Maxwell
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn
“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart
“Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou
“I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
“If things go wrong, don’t go with them.” – Roger Babson
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. It is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end street.” – Denis Waitley
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
“The most effective way to lead is to lead from within.” – Lolly Daskal
“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. You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” – Dr. Seuss
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley
“When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” – Ronald Reagan
“I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of mistakes.” – Omar Bradley
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.” – Dale Carnegie
“Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others.” – Lao Tuz
“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.” – Danny Kaye
The best way to build trust and deeper relationships is to believe in the value of your colleagues. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything they say or do. It starts by appreciating your own value.
As you reflect on ideas from the amazing people quoted below, consider that you are the person they had in mind when they spoke.
“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” – Colin Powell
“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Edmund Hillary (first man to climb Mt. Everest).
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
“If you want to go fast, go alone…but if you want to have impact, go together.” – African Proverb
“The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings … We belong in one family – God’s family, the human family …” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.” – Seth Godin
Time Management
Managing priorities, tasks, and time is the most common challenge (or frustration) in work and life. When I’m embarking on a new project, like one of my start-ups, I find myself reading these quotes often – sometimes several times a day! You have big goals and want to achieve so much; these ideas bring focus to how you think about your priorities and how you use your time:
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – St. Francis of Assisi
“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.” – Steven Pressfield
“Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it’s not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.” – David Allen
“Either the night before, or the morning of, decide what your top tasks are, and stick to doing those first thing—before you get derailed by email or any other trivial task.” – The Eventual Millionaire: How Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur and Successfully Grow Their Startup
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” – Thomas Edison
“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” Sara Blakley
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” – Proverbs 28:19
“I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.” – Oprah Winfrey
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough” – Marissa Mayer
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
If you want to influence others, start by asking questions. Think about it; if you are the one doing all the talking, you probably aren’t learning something new.
In case you need more motivation, read on…
“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.” – African Proverb
“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.” – James Stephens
“I love doing what I do. I love asking questions. I love being in the mix.” – Larry King
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, but the one who asks the right questions.” – Claude Levi-Strauss
“Think about the answers of the questions that have not yet been asked! When they are asked, you will have the answers ready!” – Mehmet Muratildan
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.” – John Ruskin
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon
“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” – Peter Drucker
“There are no foolish questions and no one becomes a fool until they stop asking questions.” – Charles Proteus Steinmetz
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Antony Jay
Some days our inspiration comes from reminding ourselves that anytime we do something worth doing we will face resistance. One of the most important factors in success is something called grit – it’s a sort of mental toughness. It doesn’t matter if you were born with it; you can cultivate it. It’s more influential to your success than where you went to school or who you know,
Today, be inspired from others who, like you, kept moving forward, even when they didn’t feel like it, and who came to see what they were capable of.
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
“If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” – Ecclesiastes 11:4
“I like things to happen. And if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” – Winston Churchill
“Busyness is not a reason for not getting other things done. It is an excuse for not claiming your true priorities.” – Alan Cohen
“You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing the small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” – Alvin Toffler
“There are seven days in the week and someday isn’t one of them.” – Anonymous
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
“The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” – Thomas Edison
“You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are.” – Tom Rath
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.” – Tolstoy
“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.” – Gretchen Rubin
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8
