50 Powerful Quotes on Leadership, Mindset & Transformation to Take You to the Next Level 

At SUCCESS®, we believe that true entrepreneurial leadership isn’t limited by what you do. We all have setbacks. But true leadership is about who you become in the process. Get powerful inspiration from entrepreneurs, business experts and thought leaders with these quotes on leadership, mindset and transformation. Get motivation through these quotes to become the leader you were meant to be. 

Growing as a business leader, entrepreneur or coach isn’t about embracing one specific skill or unlocking a unique formula. The secret to becoming a better leader? Becoming a better person. It starts internally—with the mind. The difference between success and struggle in business is mindset. At SUCCESS®, we believe true entrepreneurial leadership is not about what you do, but who you become.

The quotes on leadership, mindset and transformation below highlight the importance of understanding and embracing what it means to be a true leader. It means being authentic, having the right mindset and seeking identity-first transformation that creates lasting impact. 

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Inspiring leadership quotes for today’s leaders 

Leadership is powerful. Leaders don’t just allow things to happen—they make things happen. They are needle-movers, game-changers, innovators and influencers. They not only solve problems but also create next-level solutions that have a lasting impact. As these powerful leadership quotes below illustrate, leaders leave real legacies.

Leaders have a wide range of personality types and unique strengths, but the best leaders don’t exert power or authority for the sake of themselves. They not only drive results, but lead by example and live out core leadership values. Leaders know the power of mindset and the importance of transformation. Most true leaders, in fact, are constantly challenging themselves to learn, grow and improve. Leaders lean into emotional intelligence, level up their technical and communication skills and embrace curiosity. Quotes about great leadership prove that real leaders never stop learning. 

Leaders also know they have the ability to inspire, influence, guide and empower others—helping them unlock their fullest potential. 

The inspirational leader quotes below help highlight some of the most prominent and powerful leadership skills and traits. Yet these sayings also remind us that true leadership has much to do with empathy, authenticity, honesty, accountability and vulnerability as well. Whether you’re a business leader, an entrepreneur, a life or business coach (or aspiring coach) or a leader in some other area, these leadership development quotes can help you tap into core ideas to take you further and impact more people than ever before.

• “Consistency allows people around you to understand how you show up and how you operate, and that makes it easier for people to engage with you as a leader, as an entrepreneur, in a way that’s mutually productive. One of the big ways to do that is just being consistent with what you do, how accessible you are, how people connect with you, the messages you share.”—Glenn Sanford, managing director and publisher, SUCCESS®
  
• “Daring leaders work to make sure people can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging.” —Brené Brown, author of six No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, award-winning podcaster and shame researcher
  
• “It has been characteristic of great leaders, men whose greatness has stood the acid test of time, that they have been virtuous in conduct, pure in thought.” —Orison Swett Marden, American author, editor and founder of SUCCESS® magazine in 1897
  
• “AI can read your pulse, but it can’t feel your hesitation. It can analyze your words, but it can’t sense your disconnection. That’s why you’ll always need a human mirror—someone who knows how to hold the silence long enough for the truth to crawl out.” —Courtland Warren, founding faculty and program lead, SUCCESS Coaching™
  
• “Leaders are not born, they are made. And they are made by hard effort, which is the price we must all pay for success.” —Vince Lombardi, head coach, Green Bay Packers (1959-67), Washington Redskins (1969)
  
• “The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. That is why I wish to pay fair price for every value. If I have to pay for it or earn it, that makes something of me.” —Jim Rohn, author, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and one of America’s foremost business philosophers
  
• “Leadership ability is the lid that determines a person’s level of effectiveness. The lower an individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential. The higher the leadership, the greater the effectiveness. To give you an example, if your leadership rates an 8, then your effectiveness can never be greater than a 7. If your leadership is only a 4, then your effectiveness will be no higher than a 3. Your leadership ability—for better or for worse—always determines your effectiveness and the potential impact of your organization.” —John Maxwell, New York Times bestselling author, speaker and world-renowned leadership expert
  
• “I was no silver bullet, and like any leader, I needed to surround myself with strong talent who would bring new ideas and, with courage, challenge the old as well as challenge me.” —Howard Schultz, American author, business leader and former CEO of Starbucks
  
• “Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed.” —Sheryl Sandberg, business expert and consultant, author and former COO of Facebook

• “Leadership is not a license to do less. Leadership is a responsibility to do more.” —Simon Sinek, author, business leadership expert, TED speaker and trained ethnographer
  
• “The challenge we all face as leaders is to let the feelings churn inside you but then to present a calm exterior, and I learned to do that.” ―Indra Nooyi, author, business executive and former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
  
• “The magic of leadership isn’t found in spreadsheets or being the loudest voice in the room. It’s in creating a space where people feel inspired to show up, to grow, to innovate, and to do their very best work of their lives alongside you.” —Rich Diviny, former Navy SEAL commander, author and expert in leadership and performance
  
• “When I think about leadership, I associate leadership with the word “power.” The word “power,” by definition, is the capacity to cause movement…. Someone is displaying power when they can cause movement in themselves and/or in other people.” —Courtland Warren, founding faculty and program lead, SUCCESS Coaching™
  
• “All great leaders, all people who have achieved success in any area of life, know the power of continuously pursuing their vision, even if all the details of how to achieve it aren’t yet; available.” —Tony Robbins, New York Times bestselling author, coach, motivational speaker and global authority on leadership and personal development
  
• “In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up.” —Peter Drucker, pioneer of modern management theory, author, educator and business consultant
  
• “Leadership is about empathy. It’s about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” —Oprah Winfrey, entrepreneur, global media personality, producer, author and philanthropist
  
• “The best leaders are lifelong learners; they take measures to create organizations that foster and inspire learning throughout. The most effective leaders are those who realize it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts most.” —John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach with unprecedented success, author and leadership expert
  
• “Therefore the sage holds in his embrace the one thing (of humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires superiority.” —Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher and writer known for timeless wisdom
  
• “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.” —Max Depree, American business expert and leadership author
  
• “As an editor and leader, I’ve learned that true thought leadership in today’s digital age isn’t about who speaks the loudest; it’s about who speaks with authenticity and purpose.” —Kerrie Lee Brown, chief content officer and editor-in-chief, SUCCESS®
  
• “So for me, leadership is about knowing how to move into that centered place of wisdom, peace and resilience in us, because that’s the place from which you can also not just make great decisions, not just look at where the icebergs are before they hit the Titanic, which is one of the most important functions of leadership, to look at the future and see where the world is going, but also to communicate that to your employees, to the people you lead.” —Arianna Huffington, author, entrepreneur, co-founder of The Huffington Post and founder of Thrive Global 

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Mindset quotes to drive resilience and success 

The above quotes about great leadership encompass a range of ideas about the meaning of true, authentic leadership. From “lead by example” quotes to servant leader quotes to inspire and provoke thought, they represent some of the fundamental aspects of leadership and success today.

But what about mindset? As we’ll see in the following mindset quotes, in life and business, many believe that mindset is everything. When it comes to leadership and making a difference, mindset can’t be underestimated. Carol Dweck coined the term “growth mindset” in her 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, based on her research starting in the 1970s. However, this concept, in various forms, has been around for far longer. Some of the most ancient texts refer to core concepts and facets of the power of mindset. It’s our mindset that influences the core of who we are and who we can become.

It’s clear that the right mindset is key to leadership and sustainable growth.

These powerful mindset quotes help illustrate the impact and importance of our thoughts. After all, there’s power in the internal dialogue when faced with challenging circumstances—something that successful people know well. A growth-oriented, resilient success mindset is something many leaders possess. In fact, these winning mindset quotes might just as well be called quotes about overcoming challenges. In essence, that’s what a positive, success-driven mindset enables people to do: turn failure and adversity into strength and opportunity.

More than mindset business quotes, these sayings remind us that mindset matters in every arena. Maybe you’re wanting to grow your business, pivot in a new direction for your career or pursue a professional coaching certification. Mindset can make it happen. 

• “Success isn’t about luck—it’s about mindset, growth, and consistent effort.” —Glenn Sanford, managing director and publisher, SUCCESS®
  
• “That which man does with his hands is secondary. It is what he does with his brain that counts. That is what starts things going. Some of us never learn how to create with our minds. We depend too much upon creating with our hands, or on other people to help us. We depend too much on the things outside of us when the mainspring of life, the power that moves the world of men and things, is inside of us.” —Orison Swett Marden, American author, editor and founder of SUCCESS® magazine in 1897
  
• “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” —Carol Dweck, leading researching on motivation and mindset, Stanford professor and author
  
• “What happens when we enter a world where the information is available to everyone? Well, in an environment such as that, the only thing that will separate people is their willfulness… their resilience.” —Courtland Warren, founding faculty and program lead, SUCCESS Coaching™
  
• “No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be belief, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage or belief.” —Napoleon Hill, pioneer of modern personal success literature and philosopher on personal achievement
  
• “We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.” —Stephen Covey, renowned leadership authority, bestselling author, organizational consultant and co-founder of Franklin Covey
  
• “If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture.” —Angela Duckworth, academic, TED speaker, bestselling author and expert researcher on achievement
  
• “Our attitude about the future depends on our ability to see the future. Each of us has the inherent ability to dream, design and experience the future through the power of an imaginative inner-eye. Whatever the mind has the capacity to imagine, it also has the ability to create.” —Jim Rohn, author, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and one of America’s foremost business philosophers
  
• “All outer achievements begin within the mind. All progress is nothing more than invisible creativity made visible.” —Robin Sharma, humanitarian, bestselling author and global leadership and productivity expert
  
• “Multipliers have a rich view of the intelligence of the people around them. They don’t see a world where just a few people deserve to do the thinking. In addition, multipliers see intelligence as continually developing.” —Liz Wiseman, entrepreneur, bestselling author, executive adviser, speaker and researcher
  
• “You can do whatever you set your mind to if you just roll up your sleeves, get in there, and do it. Everything is figureoutable.” ―Marie Forleo, entrepreneur, bestselling author and award-winning podcaster
  
• “Listen to things that will build your mental resiliency. You want to have a resilient, purpose-driven mindset that will focus on the goals that you want to achieve, on the things that you need to do to reinvent yourself, to rethink your life… to see whether or not you’re on the path to becoming the next greatest version of yourself…” —Les Brown, former politician, author and world-renowned motivational speaker
  
• “I’ve observed that if individuals who prevail in a highly competitive environment have any one thing in common besides success, it is failure—and their ability to overcome it.” —Bill Walsh, head coach, San Francisco 49ers (1979-88)
  
• “Some companies, if you wanted to put it into a single word, they have a conqueror mentality, and we have an explorer mentality.” —Jeff Bezos, American business personality and founder of Amazon
  
• “By definition, a leader is someone who can see more possibilities than other people do. No matter what the hardship or setback seems to be, evolution is at play. You can adopt a style of seeing the world based on this principle; higher evolution is unstoppable.” —Deepak Chopra, M.D., world-renowned speaker, bestselling author and pioneer in mind-body medicine
  
• “Both desire and imagination are stored in the mind of the individual and when stretched, both have the potential to position a person for greatness.” —Eric Thomas, author, educator, motivational speaker and pastor 

Transformation quotes to live by 

In life and in business, transformation is critical. The greatest entrepreneurs and leaders know it means pushing past obstacles to achieve greater effectiveness, clarity, vision and fulfillment. Transforming yourself or your business can reap tremendous benefits, including lasting improvements and goal achievement. Yet it also means following up with the methods, systems and tools to be truly successful—consistently assessing and improving to get to the next level.  

Leadership isn’t static. A leadership mindset is always evolving. That’s why a key part of being a leader, of being successful in any capacity, is embracing transformation. Transformation can take on many forms, but as these transformation quotes so aptly illustrate, it can often be rooted in small successful habits that have powerful impact over time. 

In fact, some of the best leadership quotes go back to this type of transformation. The power of identity-first transformation is massive. More than temporary change, transformation rooted in identity goes much further. It’s deep and meaningful and has a lasting impact—on an individual and others.

See the inspirational transformation quotes for some of the forms it can take and the ways it can manifest. 

• “I often say that choice is a function of awareness… So if you find yourself stuck and you’re looking for transformation, it’s about first creating a level of awareness that allows that.” —Courtland Warren, founding faculty and program lead, SUCCESS Coaching™
  
• “The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized 1 or 2 strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don’t ‘succeed’ because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them.” ―Tim Ferriss, entrepreneur, investor, bestselling author, podcaster and leading business innovator
  
• “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” —Malcom Gladwell, bestselling author, public speaker and New York Times journalist
  
• “Leading with purpose builds trust, strengthens communities and leaves a legacy that lives far beyond us.” —Kerrie Lee Brown, chief content officer and editor-in-chief, SUCCESS®
  
• “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity…. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.” —James Clear, bestselling author and expert in habits and personal development

• “If you are unwilling to struggle, you are unwilling to do what it takes to grow. If you hate inconvenience or discomfort, you will plateau. Your next level of success is based on your current willingness to struggle.” —Brendan Burchard, high-performance coach, motivational speaker, podcaster and author 

• “Following the crowd is not a winning approach to life.” —Tim Tebow, quarterback, Denver Broncos (2010-11), New York Jets (2012)
  
• “You are ONE decision away from a completely different life…. Not overnight. But step by step, choice by choice, it built the life I have today. You don’t need to know how things will work out. You just need to take the first step.” —Mel Robbins, lawyer, bestselling author, motivational speaker, award-winning podcaster and personal growth expert 
  
• “The creative conscious mind can do almost anything you instruct it to do: It can change thoughts at your bidding, practice affirmations you create, wander in blissful meditation at your invitation, and learn almost any new skill at your insistence. It can think of everything you direct it to. Through discipline, effort, and continual practice, it can also accomplish almost anything you focus your thoughts on.” —Wayne Dyer, bestselling author, speaker and leader in self-development
  
• “Because if there’s one thing that kills innovation faster than anything else, it’s comfort. It’s the belief that the way something has always been done is the way it should always be done. That mentality doesn’t leave room for growth, for disruption—or for vision.” —Daymond John, entrepreneur, CEO of FUBU and Shark Tank investor
  
• “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” —Buckminster Fuller, author, architect, systems theorist and philosopher
  
• “Don’t just read a book and put it down. Read it, summarize the key ideas and then write out how you are going to implement those ideas into your life. Now act, review and improve. Stick with the ideas in that book until you realize some transformation in its implementation.” —Darren Hardy, author, speaker, business adviser and former publisher of SUCCESS®

• “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. It can be your greatest strength… if you let it. It ensures you’ll do things differently from everyone else.” —Sara Blakely, entrepreneur, founder of Spanx and Sneex and Shark Tank investor

Leadership, mindset and transformation quotes for a new perspective

Leadership, mindset, and transformation go hand-in-hand. As these leadership quotes, mindset sayings and quotes about transformation highlight, there are many facets of each of these areas to consider. Honing genuine leadership takes effort and energy. Embracing a growth mindset and working to overcome challenges can require hard work and discipline. Real transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Yet each of these things alone are powerful and, together, can make you unstoppable. 

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