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50+ Unique Quotes about Initiative and Leadership

Why You Should Never Wait for Others to Take the Lead: Quotes about Initiative. Taking the lead is important, but it’s not always necessary to wait for others to do something. Sometimes it’s best to step up and take charge.

In the workplace, showing initiative isn’t just an opportunity to make your business more effective, it’s an effective way to convince your employer to consider you an essential contribution. No matter what your field or job taking initiative can allow you to stand out the other employees who are relaxed with just following orders. A positive attitude in the workplace will help employers view yourself as an effective manager.

“The most successful people are not necessarily the ones who are the most intelligent or the best-looking, but the ones who are the most initiative.” – Unknown

Quotes about Initiative

Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself. – Seth Godin

Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen

Success has made failures of many men. – Cindy Adams

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure. – Earl Wilson

You yourself define what success is for yourself. – Vincenzo Berghella

Without risking failure, there is little chance of success. – Vincenzo Berghella

Success is hastened or delayed by one’s habits. – I. C. Robledo.

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told. – Victor Hugo.

You yourself define what success is for yourself. – Vincenzo Berghella.

I couldn’t wait for success. So I went ahead without it. – Jonathan Winters.

In moments of crisis, the initiative passes to those who are best prepared. – Charlie Morton

Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done. – Amelia Earhart

Initiative is as essential to success as a hub is essential to a wagon wheel. – Napoleon Hill

Related: Leadership John Maxwell Quotes

Quotes about Initiative Proactivity

Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success. – I.C. Robledo

One has to take initiative in life to achieve what he or she wants. – Donald Johanson

All things come to him waiting and that’s why the smart man hustles. – Evan Esar

You cannot build character and courage by taking a man’s initiative. – Vincenzo Berghella

The secret of success is knowing who to blame for your failure. – Vincenzo Berghella

Some aspects of success seem rather silly as death approaches. – Donald A. Miller.

Without initiative, leaders are simply workers in leadership positions. – Bo Bennett.

Seizing the initiative can make all the difference between winning and losing. – Thomas M. Davis.

Even when other people don’t expect a lot out of you, you have to take the initiative. – Chris Martin.

If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do things right. – Kelly Miller.

Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or conditions. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others. – Stephen Covey

Famous Quotes about Initiative

Enterprise may not be enough to get you to the top, but it will get you off the bottom. – Evan Esar

Enterprise means taking advantage not of things that happen but of things that do not happen. – Evan Esar.

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good. – Joe Paterno.

When I was younger, I thought that everything would just come to me eventually, but now I see I have to take the initiative and practise to improve myself. –  Jungkook

I’ve always had confidence. It came because I have lots of initiative. I wanted to make something of myself. – Eddie Murphy.

The key is taking responsibility and initiative, deciding what your life is about and prioritizing your life around the most important things. – Stephen Covey

When you believe in what you’re doing and use your imagination and initiative, you can make a difference. – Samuel Dash.

A go-getter never has time to attend to other people’s business because he always has more business than he can attend to. – Evan Esar

Our highest endeavor must be to develop individuals who are able out of their own initiative to impart purpose & direction to their lives. – Rudolf Steiner

Real prosperity comes from everybody in the country working together in a growth mode. Real prosperity comes as a result of people’s own initiative and efforts and so forth. Prosperity, if it comes from the government, is not prosperity. It’s an existence or a subsistence or whatever, but it isn’t prosperity. – Rush Limbaugh

When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. – Barack Obama.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit. Enthusiasm is natural; it is being alive, taking the initiative, seeing the importance of what you do, giving it dignity and making what you do important to yourself and to others. – Gordon Parks

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. – Jesse Jackson.

I took the initiative in moving forward with a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, and improvements in our educational system. – Al Gore

Success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by a dint of hard work. – Anna Pavlova

Conservatism is the perfect antidote to underdevelopment. Its commitment to individual responsibility, education, hard work, personal initiative, traditional family values and free markets is a universal formula for success in a free society. – Shelby Steele

Social action means that you find an issue in your community, and you create an initiative to solve that issue or to help people. – Marley Dias

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems. – Stephen Covey

Initiatives can neither be created nor delegated. It can only spring from the self-determining individual who decides that the wisdom of others is not always better than his own. – R. Buckminster Fuller

Read More: Quotes on Servant Leadership

Quotes about Initiative in the Workplace

Force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do. – Keith Rabois.

You’ve got to take the initiative and play your game. In a decisive set, confidence is the difference. – Chris Evert.

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence. – M.P. Singh

Where self-interest is suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control that dries up the wellspring of initiative and creativity. – Pope John Paul

Begin to take the initiative when you want to meet someone new. Be the one who steps forward first. Simply say hello and begin a conversation. – Susan C. Young

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves. – Abraham Lincoln

There are three lessons in philanthropy – one, involve the family, especially the spouse. She can be a remarkable driver of your initiative. Two, you need to build an institution, and you need to scale it up. Choose a leader for philanthropy whom you trust. Third, philanthropy needs patience, tenacity and time. –  Azim Premji

Initiative without action is the same as having the mind to acknowledge a problem, but not having the heart to see it through. – Suzy Kassem

The initiative was essentially led by civil society because the policy of the government was that Africans must not be taught to graze in pastures which were reserved for the main white group. – Nelson Mandela

It is a good initiative for the dreams that would change one society to be nursed in another environment, before being transplanted to strive in its original environment for the change process to begin! – Israelmore Ayivor

Also Read: Quotes about Socialism

Short Quotes about Initiative

Successful people move on their own initiative but they know where they are going before they start. – Napoleon Hill

You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. – William J. H. Boetcker

Take initiative and snap outside of passivity; consistent small actions have impact. – Darren Rowse

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. – I.C. Robledo

For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual. – Dalai Lama

Initiative is the essence of manhood. Nothing comes to the man who is passive, except failure. – Dennis Rainey

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. – Booker T. Washington

If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do the thing right. – Kelly Miller

The man who has done his level best is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure. – B.C. Forbes

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success. – Dale Carnegie

Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. – David Frost.

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