Visionary Leadership Quotes:

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

- Warren G. Bennis

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership, True Leader, Mission And Vision

The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.

- Malcolm Gladwell

source: "The Tweaker" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. November 14, 2011.

topic: Leadership, Positivity, Creative, Visionary Leaders, Visionary Leadership

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

- Ralph Nader

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Success, Mission And Vision, Leadership And Vision

If you want to build a ship, don't summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

topic: Jobs, Ocean, People, Maritime, Innovative Leadership

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

- Michelangelo

topic: Inspirational, Life, Positive, Aspire, Inspirational Goal Setting

In a climate of uncertainty and fear, without strong and visionary leadership, people panic.

- Patrick Dodson

topic: Leadership, Strong, People, Visionary Leadership

You can't do it unless you can imagine it.

- George Lucas

topic: Motivational, Imagine, Mission And Vision, Leadership And Vision, Leadership Vision

Without strong visionary leadership, no strategy will be executed effectively.

- Robert S. Kaplan

source: "Strategy Execution and the Balanced Scorecard". Interview with Martha Lagace, hbswk.hbs.edu. August 11, 2008.

topic: Strong, Visionaries, Strategy, Visionary Leadership

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

- Theodore Roosevelt

topic: Love, Stars, Teaching, Stars In The Sky, Mission And Vision

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. Many people who approach the area of vision in leadership have it backwards. They believe that if the cause is good enough, people will automatically buy in and follow. But that's not how leadership works. People don't follow worthy causes; they follow worthy leaders with a cause they can believe in. They buy into the leader first.

- John C. Maxwell

topic: Believe, People, Leader, True Leader, Leadership And Vision

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.

- Robert Jarvik

source: "At theNAT, building a family". Interview with Lisa Deaderick, www.sandiegouniontribune.com. June 4, 2016.

topic: Inspirational, Leadership, Fear, Leadership And Vision, Leadership Vision

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

- Robert Fritz

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Choices, Spiritual Vision, Mission And Vision

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

- Steve Jobs

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Best Success, Social Innovation

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

topic: Leadership, Art, Business, Management Motivation, Funny Leadership

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

- Alvin Toffler

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Time, Futurist, Mission And Vision

When the world is in the midst of change, when adversity and opportunity are almost indistinguishable, this is the time for visionary leadership and when leaders need to look beyond the survival needs of those they're serving.

- Chip Conley

source: Interview with Bob Morris, bobmorris.biz. June 28, 2011.

topic: Adversity, Opportunity, Leader, Visionary Leadership

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

- Theodore Hesburgh

source: Interview with Philip Scarpino, tobiascenter.iu.edu. January 6, 2009.

topic: Leadership, Business, Blow, True Leader, Innovative Leadership

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

- Colin Powell

source: Colin L. Powell, Joseph E. Persico (2010). “My American Journey”, p.52, Ballantine Books

topic: Motivational, Inspiring, Leadership, Inspirational Military, Inspiring Leader

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

- John F. Kennedy

topic: Inspirational, Leadership, Educational, Live And Learn, Top Management

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

- Eric Hoffer

topic: Leadership, Coaching, Vision, Leadership And Management, Leadership And Vision

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: "Walden". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1854.

topic: Love, Inspirational, Life, Live For Yourself, Man Of My Dreams

It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

- Vaclav Havel

topic: Steps, Action, Enough, Steps In Life, Mission And Vision

In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.

- David Ben-Gurion

source: Television broadcast, CBS, 5 Oct. 1956

topic: Inspirational, Believe, Order, Israeli, Leadership And Vision

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.

- Seneca the Younger

topic: Wind, Vision, Doe, Mission And Vision, Leadership And Vision

Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present.

- Rudy Giuliani

source: 2004 Republican National Convention Address, delivered 30 August 2004, Madison Square Garden, New York

topic: Leadership, Vision, Needs, Leadership And Vision, Leadership Vision

Free and open expression coupled with visionary leadership generally encourages good decision-making.

- M. Russell Ballard

topic: Expression, Decision, Visionaries, Good Decision, Visionary Leadership

Are you responsibly optimistic? Pessimism and leadership do not mix. Leaders are positively visionary.

- J. Oswald Sanders

topic: Optimistic, Leader, Visionaries, Visionary Leadership

Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.

- Rumi

topic: Funny, Motivation, Positive Thinking, Mission And Vision, Leadership And Vision

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.

- Tony Blair

topic: Motivational, Leadership, Art, True Leader, Funny Leadership

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do but to achieve what they want to achieve.

- Tom Landry

topic: Leadership, Business, Want, Great Coach, Educational Leaders

Leaders of the future will have to be visionary and be able to bring people in - real communicators. These are things that women bring to leadership and executive positions, and it's going to be incredibly valuable and incredibly in demand.

- Anita Borg

topic: Real, People, Leader, Future Leaders, Visionary Leaders

Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.

- David Cameron

topic: Leadership, Kings, Real, Civil Right Movement, Civil Rights Leaders