In order to be a great leader, you need to be able to motivate and inspire those who are following you. These leadership quotes will help get you started on the right foot. They provide valuable insight into what it takes to be an effective leader, and will remind you of the importance of your role.

1. The road to success is full of pit stops, pitfalls, and self pity; my advice is simply don’t stop! — Noel DeJesus, 44 Days of Leadership

2. Twitter gives people an illusionary sense of leadership. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

3. Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team. — Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

4. Life isn’t easy, and leadership is harder still. — Walter Russell Mead

5. My student days in PSG saw three Prime Ministers, two wars, taught us courage, resilience, leadership and optimism. — Shiv Nadar

6. If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership. — Will Rogers

7. As a leader, if you can no longer inspire your people it is time to step aside and let someone else take the lead — Thomas Narofsky, F(X) Leadership Unleashed!

8. Leadership is about having the courage to go against the advice of the so–called experts and doing what your instinct tells you is right. — Robert Kraft

9. America needs optimistic leadership to revive national soul. — Mike Huckabee

10. Leadership is about making decisions with the information you have, not the information people will have 12 years later, i kind of feel sorry for my friend Jeb Bush. — Mike Huckabee

11. Because of the president’s leadership, every American will have access to affordable, quality health care. — Rahm Emanuel

12. Micromanagement is the destroyer of momentum. — Miles Anthony Smith, Why Leadership Sucks™ Volume 2: The Pain, Pitfalls, and Challenges of Servant Leadership Fundamentals

13. We need to be a leadership position about protecting minors on the Internet and, more importantly, giving the parents the tools they need to protect them. — Peter Chernin

14. You cannot run a multimillion–dollar business like you would a lemonade stand. — Mark Miller, Chess, Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game

15. Earn your leadership every day. — Michael Jordan

16. Showing leadership doesn’t mean every employee will run the organization that would lead to chaos. Businesses do need someone to set the vision and then lead the team to it. — Robin S. Sharma

17. Simple is clever. Complicated just means you haven’t been clever enough to reduce ‘it’ to its essence. — Phil Dourado, The Little Book of Leadership: a Free eBook from the Leadership Hub

18. Being positive in a negative situation is not naive. It’s leadership. — Ralph Marston

19. The greatest challenge of Leadership maintaining personal conviction in a globalized world. — Myles Munroe

20. Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing. — Stan Slap

21. We need to be a leadership position about protecting minors on the Internet and, more importantly, giving the parents the tools they need to protect them. — Peter Chernin

22. Judge behavior, not motives. — Miles Anthony Smith, Why Leadership Sucks™ Volume 2: The Pain, Pitfalls, and Challenges of Servant Leadership Fundamentals

23. By our day, self–restraint was considered madness. — Mark Sayers, Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm

24. Next time you’re about to call your daughter bossy, take a deep breath and say, ‘My daughter has executive leadership skills.’ — Sheryl Sandberg

25. We live in a time where government is not a leadership thing, it’s more a business that’s out there and running riot, so I guess the people have to go out there and say stuff. — Yahoo Serious

26. True leadership is measured by what happens after you die. — Myles Munroe

27. We were elected to serve our districts, and that demands putting bygones aside. That’s what leadership’s all about. — Paul Gosar

28. The road to success is full of pit stops, pitfalls, and self pity; my advice is simply don’t stop! — Noel DeJesus, 44 Days of Leadership

29. Leadership is a skill learned through many venues. — Todd Stocker, Leading from the Gut: 3 Power Principles of Effective Leaders

30. Macromanage, Not Micromanage — Miles Anthony Smith, Why Leadership Sucks™ Fundamentals of Level 5 Leadership and Servant Leadership

31. If leadership is the spinal cord of success then discipline is its lumbar vertebrae. — Noel DeJesus, 44 Days of Leadership

32. Servant leadership is the foundation and the secret of Sam Walton’s ability to achieve team synergy. — Michael Bergdahl

33. Leadership means forming a team and working toward common objectives that are tied to time, metrics, and resources. — Russel Honore

34. The defining qualities that will distinguish great leaders from the rest are stemmed from the mindset level. — Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity

35. Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go. — Phil Jackson

36. Leadership was not an act of bravery but rather forbearance and the strength to move forward with humility in the belief of what is righteous — Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

37. Branding is not just a product, it’s also a way of life, an idea, branding is actually leadership. — Onyi Anyado

38. We need to be a leadership position about protecting minors on the Internet and, more importantly, giving the parents the tools they need to protect them. — Peter Chernin

39. In the military, I learned that ‘leadership’ means raising your hand and volunteering for the tough, important assignments. — Tulsi Gabbard

40. Leadership will either lead you into a ditch or lead you into purpose. We need our leaders, especially those who are teaching our young people, to have the right message. — Myles Munroe

41. ‘i believe ”Leadership” is creating the environment for the greatness in people to emerge.’ — Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics

42. Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it. — Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

43. The atmosphere at my school was very competitive. Young girls were competing with each other every day for status, for leadership, for the affection of the teachers. I hated it. — Zhang Ziyi

44. Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. — Max De Pree

45. Leadership’s a lot more about how brilliantly you work and how masterfully you behave. — Robin S. Sharma

46. Leadership is so defined by men, and we need to revise that–we need to be able to say that the people we honor are not the conquerors but the peacemakers. — Winnie Byanyima

47. The greatest challenge of Leadership maintaining personal conviction in a globalized world. — Myles Munroe

48. Leadership is about doing the right thing, even if it going against a vast number of naysayers and mediocre people. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

49. Vision is a future state of beings. — Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity

50. I love Hitler for his leadership, but I abhor his actions. — M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS

Leadership is not about being in charge; it’s about taking care of those in your charge. Leadership is about inspiring others to believe in themselves and to strive for greatness. It’s about having the courage to take risks and the willingness to put yourself in uncomfortable positions. Great leaders understand that it’s not about them, it’s about what they can do to help those they lead. We can all learn from these wise words of leadership and strive to embody them in our own lives.