John C. Maxwell

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

When the leader lacks confidence, the followers lack commitment.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Success is…knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.

A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

I like to praise and reward in a loud voice and to scold in a whisper.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

A great leader has to be flexible, holding his ground on the major principles but finding room for compromises that can bring people together. A great leader has to be savvy at negotiations so we don’t drown every bill in pork barrel bridges to nowhere. I know how to stand my ground – but I also know that Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground to stand on as well.

But real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing that the time has come to move beyond waiting to doing.

The challenge of leadership is to create change and facilitate growth.

The very essence of leadership is having vision.

Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts–against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

You do your job, you keep your job. Do it well, you get a better job.

In real life, if I were firing you, I’d tell you what a great job you did, how fantastic you are, and how you can do better someplace else. If somebody steals, that’s different, but generally speaking, you want to let them down as lightly as possible. It’s not a very pleasant thing. I don’t like firing people.

I feel like the thing we can do is celebrate people doing great work and create more cultural momentum and awareness that this is an important thing in the world. So when the next economic crisis hits and people are talking about where to cut from the budget, science isn’t the thing.

Most great leaders in history that I’ve studied always need to get as wide a range of opinions as possible so that they can have sufficient information to make the right decisions.

You don’t reward failure by promoting those responsible for it, because all you get is more failure.

And give… give more credit to others and don’t assume they’re mean until you know they’re actually mean.