Change, Leadership, and Change Management Quotes
These change management quotes include quotes on management, change, leadership, resistance, and other topics that change managers are certainly familiar with…
- “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.” – Kurt Lewin
- “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “When in doubt, choose change.” – Lily Leung
- “It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
- “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
- “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
- “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.” – Peter Senge
- “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” – John C. Maxwell
- “Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” – Peter F. Drucker
- “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” – Bill Gates
- “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
- “A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.” – Douglas MacArthur
- “Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day.” – Frances Hesselbein
- “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” – Albert Einstein
- “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘Don’t change anything.’” – Henry Ford
- “There is nothing permanent except change.” – Heraclitus
- “Everyone agrees that change management is important. Making it happen effectively, however, needs to be a core competence of managers and not something that they can pass off to others.” – Ron Ashkenas
- “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar
- “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” – Peter Drucker
- “Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.” – Alvin Toffler
- “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” – John Maxwell
- “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
- “Change is not only likely, it’s inevitable.” – Barbara Sher
- “The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.” – John P. Kotter
- “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu
- “To lead people, walk behind them.” – Lao Tzu
- “Without initiative, leaders are simply workers in leadership positions.” – Bo Bennett
- “Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage…” – William Pollard
- “Lead by inspiration, not intimidation.” – Rebecca Aguilar
- “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
- “Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.” – Robin S. Sharma
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
- “The art of communication is the language of leadership.” – James Humes
- “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John Maxwell
- “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.” – Peter F. Drucker
- “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” – Lao Tzu
- “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” – Dianne Feinstein
- “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” – Henry Ford
- “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”- Woodrow Wilson, former U.S. President
- “Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” – Michelle Obama
- “The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.” – Bill Clinton
- “Stress is nothing but the fear of change.” – Debasish Mridha
- “Comfort and the fear of change are the greatest enemies of success.” –Jeanette Coron
- “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
- “If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you.” – Indra Nooyi
- “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan