38 of the Most Inspirational Leadership Quotes…Ever

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By Dr. Travis Bradberry

No one can deny the power of a good quote. They motivate and inspire us to be our best.

Here are 38 of my absolute favorites:

  1. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” —Mother Teresa
  2. “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
  3. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford
  4. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” —Vince Lombardi
  5. “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.” —Charles Swindoll
  6. “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.” —Oprah Winfrey
  7. “Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
  8. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” —Jimmy Dean
  9. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” —Audrey Hepburn
  10. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
  11. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” —Les Brown
  12. “Do or do not. There is no try.” —Yoda
  13. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” —Napoleon Hill
  14. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —Mark Twain
  15. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” —Michael Jordan
  16. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” —Albert Einstein
  17. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” —Stephen Covey
  18. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” —Henry Ford
  19. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker
  20. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” —Amelia Earhart
  21. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” —Aristotle Onassis
  22. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
  23. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand
  24. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” —Vincent Van Gogh
  25. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” —Farrah Gray
  26. “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” —Dalai Lama
  27. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
  28. “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” —Bob Dylan
  29. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” —Leonardo da Vinci
  30. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” —Helen Keller
  31. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” —John Lennon
  32. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
  33. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” —George Addair
  34. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” —Plato
  35. “Nothing will work unless you do.” —Maya Angelou
  36. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” —Theodore Roosevelt
  37. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” —Plutarch
  38. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” — Jack Welch

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.

Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and the cofounder of TalentSmartEQ¼ the world’s leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries.

Dr. Bradberry is a LinkedIn Influencer and a regular contributor to Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, The World Economic Forum, and The Huffington Post. He has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Fast Company, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.

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