68 Inspiring Leadership Quotes for Business Owners

Stepping into a leadership role is rewarding. You’re entrusted to shape population, chart a strategic path, and inspire those around you.

Yet, it can also be lonely at the top. You might assemble a circle of confidants, but the ultimate responsibilities and pressures are uniquely yours. The excellent information is you’re not alone—even if it feels like it. You’re part of a wealthy lineage of leaders who’ve navigated similar challenges, and many have passed down practical wisdom. Their words can assist you embrace the complexities of your position—remain motivated and celebrate your power to make positive transformation.

68 leadership quotes for business owners

• Quotes that define leadership
• Quotes about leadership qualities
• Leadership and collaboration
• Leadership and perseverance
• Leadership quotes about wisdom and thrill
• Leadership and inspiring others
• Leadership and integrity

These leadership quotations distill what some of history’s greatest leaders have learned about how to navigator—and why authentic leadership matters. Look to them all for encouragement or browse by category to discover motivational quotes that resonate:

Quotes that define leadership

1. “A chief takes people where they desire to leave. A great chief takes people where they don’t necessarily desire to leave, but ought to be.” —Rosalynn Carter

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

3. “Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.” —statement Bradley

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

5. “factual leadership lies in guiding others to achievement. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.” —statement Owens

6. “recent concept distinguishes between a chief and a supporter.” —Steve Jobs

7. “Leadership is the capacity to translate imagination into reality.” —Warren Bennis

8. “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very straightforward to declare yes.” —Tony Blair

9. “The first responsibility of a chief is to define reality. The last is to declare thank you. In between, the chief is a servant.” —Max DePree

10. “A chief is a dealer in aspiration.” —Napoleon Bonaparte

Quotes about leadership qualities

11. “Knowing what you cannot do is more significant than knowing what you can do.” —Lucille Ball

12. “Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to transformation course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.” —Tom Peters

13. “Leaders are not, as we are often led to ponder, people who leave along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who leave their own way without caring, or even looking to view, whether anyone is following them.” —John Holt

14. “If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

16. “Becoming a great chief doesn’t cruel being perfect. It means living with your imperfections.” —Lolly Daskal

17. “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” —Kenneth Blanchard

18. “The test of leadership is to be powerful, but not impolite; be benevolent, but not frail; be bold, but not bully; be considerate, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” —Jim Rohn

19. “Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of obvious strengths.” —John Peter Zenger

20. “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” —Peter Drucker

21. “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in ordinary: It was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their period. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” —John Kenneth Galbraith

22. “To navigator people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.”—Lao Tzu

23. “A excellent general not only sees the way to win; he also knows when win is unfeasible.” —Polybius

24. “The greatest chief is the one who recognizes how tiny he/she is, extracts strength from modesty and encounter from weaknesses.” —Augusto Cury

Leadership and collaboration

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

26. “A excellent chief takes a little more than his distribute of the blame, a little less than his distribute of the financing.” —Arnold H. Glasow

27. “Without throng, there is no liberation.” —Audre Lorde

28. “A competent chief can get efficient service from impoverished troops, while on the contrary, an incapable chief can demoralize the best of troops.” —John J. Pershing

29. “A chief is best when people barely recognize he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will declare: we did it ourselves.” —Lao Tzu

30. “You cannot manage men into battle. You manage things; you navigator people.” —Grace Murray Hopper

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

32. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

33. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

—Albert Schweitzer

34. “It is better to navigator from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate win when enjoyable things occur. You receive the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” —Nelson Mandela

Leadership and perseverance

35. “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is tranquil.” —Publilius Syrus

36. “leave over, under, through, and opinions will transformation organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t worry if they like it.” —Tina Fey

37. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to transformation. The chief adjusts the sails.” —John Maxwell

38. “The factual mark of a chief is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action—an unconventional roadmap, a distinctive product-advancement roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign—even as the rest of the globe wonders why you’re not marching in step with the position quo.” —statement Taylor

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

40. “You boost strength, courage, and confidence by every encounter in which you really stop to look terror in the face. You must do the thing you ponder you cannot do.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Leadership quotes about wisdom and thrill

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

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

43. “You have to be burning with an concept, or a issue, or a incorrect that you desire to correct. If you’re not passionate enough from the commence, you’ll never stick it out.” ―Steve Jobs

44. “Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to arrive. Get up and make them.” —Madam C. J. Walker

45. “The most risky leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have sure charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in truth, the opposite is factual. Leaders are made rather than born.” —Warren Bennis

46. “Isn’t this the purpose of education, to discover the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for excellent in the globe?” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

47. “A great chief’s courage to fulfill his imagination comes from thrill, not position.” —John Maxwell

48. “Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, population stands still. advancement occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the chance to transformation things for the better.” —Harry S. Truman

Leadership and inspiring others

49. “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a imagination. It’s got to be a imagination you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an doubtful trumpet.” —Theodore Hesburgh

50. “No man is excellent enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”—Abraham Lincoln

51. “Our chief desire is someone who will inspire us to be what we recognize we could be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

52. “due leaders leave out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people depend in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” —Sam Walton

53. “I commence with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” —Ralph Nader

54. “The mediocre educator tells. The excellent educator explains. The superior educator demonstrates. The great educator inspires.” —William Arthur Ward

55. “If your actions inspire others to aspiration more, discover more, do more, and become more, you are a chief.” ―John Quincy Adams

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

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

Leadership and integrity

58. “A genuine chief is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

59. “He who has great power should use it lightly.” —Seneca

60. “Management is doing things correct; leadership is doing the correct things.” ―Peter Drucker

61. “The best form of saying is being.” ―Che Guevarra

62. “Never question that a tiny throng of considerate, concerned citizens can transformation the globe. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead

63. “Great leaders instill a sense of meaning and belonging in their followers by putting the personal imprint of who they are and what they stand for on their people.” ―Kevin Leman

64. “Leadership cannot just leave along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral test of the day.” —Jesse Jackson

65. “Positive leaders remain grounded in ethical values and use a human growth mindset. They are fixed and flexible at the same period, never straying from ethics but always willing to transformation with the times.” —Linda Fisher Thornton

66. “We’re here for a rationale. I depend a bit of the rationale is to throw little torches out to navigator people through the dim.” —Whoopi Goldberg

67. “provide light and people will discover the way.” —Ella Baker

68. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and pursue.” —Chinese Proverb