John C. Maxwell Quotations | Page 2

If you can learn to understand people how they think, what they feel, what inspires them, how they're likely to act and react in a given situation- then you can motivate and influence them in a positive way.

Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.

To be an influencer, you have to love people before you can try to lead them.

It's better to prepare than to repair.

The best way to help people is to see the best in them.

It's good to be out of your comfort zone. Just don't step out of your gift zone.

To help [people] understand that what you shortcut today, cannot be made up tomorrow. So it's like, I'm not going to do anything today, and I'm going to do the wrong thing today and somehow tomorrow it will get a lot better."

Everyone is a leader because everyone influences someone.

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. How do you gain influence from people? You invest in them. How do you invest in them? It starts with giving them time.

What am I doing with the gifts that have been given and the opportunities that are mine to make things better for others? I think it's always - success has to be beyond the person who is themselves working for personal success. It's also got to be helping someone else.

The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that's when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.

If you don’t try to create the future you want, you must endure the future you get.

The secret of successful people lies in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied.

Why would God send people to our church if we don't have a great dream? Why would God give a multigifted, multitalented, and multifinancially wealthy person to a church if the biggest thing you are going to do is paint the restrooms next year? That's bad stewardship.

If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.

SUCCESS is when I add value to MYSELF. SIGNIFICANCE is when I add value to OTHERS.

It's true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.

God doesn't move until we move first.

To measure a leader, put a tape around his heart, not his head.

You have to live with the people to know their needs, and you have to live with God to know how to solve them.

The first person you lead is you.

I hold conferences, and the result of that was that the secular community also started picking up my stuff, and pretty soon they wanted more. So I realized I could not only minister to the Christian community, but I could also minister to the corporate community. So my books started crossing over, and then I began to intentionally have them cross over.

Don't buy into the notion that mistakes can somehow be avoided. They can't be.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

A dream becomes a reality as a result of your actions, and your actions are controlled, to a large extent, by your habits.

The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him, but the number of people he serves.

A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

I'm not where I'm supposed to be, I'm not what I want to be, But I'm not what I used to be. I haven't learned how to arrive; I've just learned how to keep going

It is hard to feel bad about yourself when you are doing something good for someone else. There are a lot of ways to lift your self-esteem, but making a positive difference in another's life has got to be my best leadership guidance. Serving others and working to add value to them will lift your spirits in a way that nothing else will. Trust me on this one.

The person who does only what he must when he is in the mood or when it's convenient isn't going to be successful.

Not everybody who has a vision is a leader, but every leader has a vision.

The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.

The length and breath of our influence on others are directly related to the depth of our concern for them.

By choosing to embrace and practice good values every day, you choose the higher course in life. And your life goes in a direction that you will always feel good about. You may not always get what you desire, but you will always be the person you desire to be.

Without a vision people and the church become self-centered. People start finding fault with one another and the church self-destructs.

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

Find your vision, and let it guide you in all that you do. If you lack vision, look inside yourself. Draw on your natural gifts and desires.

Churches whose members fight with one another have lost their vision for the lost.

Experience isn't the best teacher - evaluated experience is.

Credibility is a leader's currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.

Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.

Vision is something pastors and churches cannot afford to live without.

You will become on the outside, what you believe on the inside.

The person who insists on using yesterday's methods in today's world won't be in business tomorrow

It is our decisions not our conditions that determine our quality of life.

Without a vision people in leadership positions perish. You not only lose your people, you lose the person who is in a leadership position - you lose it all.

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

People can open doors for you, but you ... must walk through.

We were created for meaningful work, and one of life's greatest pleasures is the satisfaction of a job well done.

We cannot achieve our wildest dreams by remaining who we are

The longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds that you will never actually do it.

The highway of life is filled with flat squirrels that couldn't make a decision.

Leadership is not a right-it is a responsibility.

Sometimes the best way to learn is to return to the fundamentals.

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.

If your job is not making a difference in this world, by all means, get out there and find something else ... You’ll find a sense of making a difference through your work if you simply look for it.

You don't overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.

Every person has seeds of greatness within, even though they may currently be dormant.

I wrote the book [Today Matters] because I have a passion to help people personally grow. Really what it is, it's a personal growth book.

Every worthwhile accomplishment has a price tag attached to it. The question is always whether you are willing to pay the price to attain it - in hard work, sacrifice, patience, faith, and endurance.

Great leaders understand that the right attitude will set the right atmosphere, which enables the right response from others.

You can easily determine the caliber of a person by the amount of opposition it takes to discourage him or her.

Anytime a church squabbles over minor things you can be certain they do not have a clear picture of what they need to be.

Successful leaders have the courage to take action while others hesitate.

Some people want everything to be perfect before they're willing to commit... But commitment always precedes achievement.

You add value to people when you value them.

My potential is what God gives me - that's His gift to me - what I give back to Him is what I do with that potential.

Your life begins to change when you change something you do every day.

If your desire is a 10 but your self-esteem is a 5, you'll never perform at the level of a 10. You'll perform as a 5 or lower. People are ever able to outperform their self-image.

We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.

I've worked very hard at giving excellent training and good materials, resources, books, and then the corporate community gives me respect. And I'm finding now that they really want a relationship with me, they're letting me in their lives, and of course, when you get in their lives you find a tremendous need for God.

The person who forgets the ultimate is a slave to the immediate.

Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.

If you desire to become a more generous person, don't wait for your income to change. Change your heart.

Life is now in session. Are you present?

Failure is not a one-time event; it's how you deal with life along the way. Until you breathe your last breath, you're still in the process, and there is still time to turn things around for the better.

Teamwork gives you the best opportunity to turn vision into reality.

Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.

Since an attitude is often expressed by our body language and by the looks on our faces, it can be contagious.

I kept saying to myself, this is a calling that God has given me. And so with intention I said, "Okay I'm going to write books not only for the Christian community, but also for the secular community." I found it really rewarding because the last one to use my gifts and advantages to people who look at church as not on their radar screen at all, it gives me favor with - I do a lot with Fortune 500 companies now.

Must manage your thought life daily and then you can manage your life.

Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.

God gives us the vision, then He expects us to walk in obedience. As we do, the resources we need come to us.

To reach your potential you must grow. And to grow, you must be highly intentional about it.

The GREATEST battle you wage against FAILURE occurs on the INSIDE, not the OUTSIDE.

It was in the mid-70's, '74 or '75 I started doing leadership conferences for pastors and in '79 I wrote my first book "Think On These Things".

If you think you are the entire picture, you will never see the big picture.

Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.

You can never be more outside of you, than what's in you

God has never given a dream that could be fulfilled at step one. So start walking, be obedient, and watch God fulfill that dream in your life.

A leader can give up anything - except final responsibility.

If you believe in others and give them a positive reputation to uphold, you can help them to become better than they think they are.

I talk about my daily dozen in the book [ Today Matters]. Twelve things that are certainly attainable by any of us that we need to manage every day.

There is definitely a connection between finding your passion and reaching your potential. People ask me all the time, 'John, how do I know what I am meant to do in life?' The answer is really simple: Energy and Excellence. When you experience unbounded energy in what you are doing, when you are driven to excellence in your work and love what you do - then you can rest assured that you have found your passion and are definitely in pursuit of your full potential.

Seven Steps to Success 1) Make a commitment to grow daily. 2) Value the process more than events. 3) Don't wait for inspiration. 4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity. 5) Dream big. 6) Plan your priorities. 7) Give up to go up.

Successful people don't have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.

Leadership is influence.

God has never given anybody a dream that He did not want that person to fulfill.

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

Good attitudes among players do not guarantee a team's success, but bad attitudes guarantee it's failure.