John C. Maxwell Quotes

See what a person is doing every day, day after day, and you'll know who that person is and what he or she is becoming.

Effective leaders don't gather things just for themselves; they do it in order to give to others.

If you don't change the direction you are going, then you're likely to end up where you're heading.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves.

Of all the things a leader should fear, complacency heads the list.

Hope is not strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality.

You can't grow and learn if your focus is on finding someone else to blame instead of looking at your own shortcomings.

The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.

If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.

When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective... reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes.

Want to impress others? Talk about your successes. Want to impact others? Talk about your failures.

Courage and initiative come when you understand your purpose in life.

People are funny. When they are young, they will spend their health to get wealth. Later, they will gladly pay all they have trying to get their health back.

Leadership is influence.

The key to becoming a more efficient leader isn't checking off all the items on your to-do list each day. It's in forming the habit of prioritizing your time so that you are accomplishing your most important goals in an efficient manner.

The position does not make you a leader. The title, the promotion, the fancy corner office do not make you a leader. No, it is relationships with people that are the foundation, the very heart of leadership. Have you ever worked for someone you didn't like? It's difficult, isn't it? On the other hand, the leader you will follow anywhere and everywhere is one you know cares about you, and values you. This person has your best interests at heart. It is the leader who comes alongside to help you improve and grow.

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent.

It's one thing to make a choice. It's another to put that choice into practice.

If you're always at the head of the class, then you're in the wrong class.

If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.

Success is choosing to enter the arena of action, determined to give yourself to the cause that will better humanity and last for eternity.

While a good leader sustains momentum, a great leader increases it.

Personal and organizational effectiveness is proportionate to the strength of leadership.

People will summarize your life in one sentence - Pick it now.

Discipline - Success doesn't just happen. You have to be intentional about it, and that takes discipline.

The truth is that you can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once.

When contemplating the pursuit of a dream or the start of a new venture, too many people are hesitant to begin because they can't comprehend the entire journey. If that's where you find yourself right now, don't expect to understand what it takes to get to the top. Just take the next step. There's no shame in starting small; in fact, if you don't start small, you'll probably never start at all.

You have to know who you are to grow to your potential. But you have to grow in order to know who you are.

Nothing is as hard as it looks; everything is more rewarding than you expect; and if anything can go right it will and at the best possible moment.

People knowledge is much more important than mere product knowledge.

Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.

Vision is a picture of a desired future; a picture of something that I don't possess right now, but it is something I want to see and experience, and something I want the people I am leading to experience.

There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. 'Good pride' represents our dignity and self-respect. 'Bad pride' is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.

God gives us resources according to our dreams and according to our obedience. And God doesn't give those resources until we've started walking in obedience.

If the church is going to make a difference, it will need to go through the "big give-up" stage. Churches will need to quit being selfish and become relevant.

The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.

You have no control over how much talent you possess. You control only what you do with it.

Success each day should be judged by the seeds sown, not the harvest reaped.

Before you can do anything else in the lives of others, you must show them love.

Your attitude is a choice.

The first step to leadership is servanthood.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood.

The greatest of all miracles is that we need not be tomorrow what we are today. The greatest of all insights is that we cannot be tomorrow what we do not do today. That is why today matters.

To connect with people, be yourself, at your best.

Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?

Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991), the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means “to make firm.” So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves.