Looking for inspirational quotes for work?

Maybe some motivation, encouragement, or a gentle kick in the rear to get you going?

You’ve come to the right place!

In this post, I’ve compiled a list of inspirational work quotes that have been shared with the world by entrepreneurs, public figures, authors, athletes, and thought leaders.

Let’s jump right in.

1. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” — Abraham Lincoln
2. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” — Steve Jobs
3. “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
4. “We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.” — Helen Keller
5. “We fear the future because we are wasting today.” — Mother Teresa
6. “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.” — Vincent Van Gogh
7. “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein
8. “Never allow a person to tell you ‘no’ who doesn’t have the power to say ‘yes.’” — Eleanor Roosevelt
9. “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” — Mark Twain
10. “Someday is not a day of the week.” — Janet Dailey

    

11. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney
12. “Success in never final; failure is never fatal.” — Conrad Hilton
13. “Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures.” — Vince Lombardi
14. “Failure is not the opposite of success: it’s part of success.” — Arianna Huffington
15. “Employees, especially young people, want more than a paycheck.” — Marissa Mayer
16. “The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.” — H. Jackson Brown Jr.
17. “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” — Jim Rohn
18. “Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.” — Gary Ryan Blair
19. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau
20. “Progress has little to do with speed, but much to do with direction.” — Unknown

    

21. “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” — Dalai Lama
22. “Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.” — Jim Rohn
23. “My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.” — Michael Jordan
24. “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.” — Henry Ford
25. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” — Stephen Covey
26. “Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” — Farrah Gray
27. “Developing a good work ethic is key. Apply yourself at whatever you do, whether you’re a janitor or taking your first summer job because that work ethic will be reflected in everything you do in life.” — Tyler Perry
28. “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” — Dale Carnegie
29. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” — Woody Allen
30. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.“ — Alexander Graham Bell

    

31. “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.” — William Patten
32. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” — William Feather
33. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” — Albert Einstein
34. “The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost
35. “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” — Ayn Rand
36. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” — Abraham Lincoln
37. “You always have two choices — your commitment versus your fear.” — Sammy Davis Jr.
38. “Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.” — Julie Andrews
39. “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb
40. “If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” — Steve Jobs

    
    

41. “Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.” — Maya Angelou
42. “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” — Lou Holtz
43. “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” — Amelia Earhart
44. “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” — Jim Rohn
45. “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”  — George Bernard Shaw
46. “Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.“ — Ralph Waldo Emerson
47. “We will either find a way or make one.” — Hannibal
48. “Light tomorrow with today.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
49. “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.” — Thomas Jefferson
50. “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” — Thomas Carlyle

    

51. “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire, the size of your dream, and how you handle disappointment along the way.” — Robert Kiyosaki
52. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
    
53. “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda
54. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” — Warren Buffett
55. “Work hard and be kind and amazing things will happen.” — Conan O’Brien
56. “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali
57. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing; that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar
58. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
59. “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti

    

60. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
61. “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” — Mahatma Gandhi
62. “Not knowing you can’t do something is sometimes all it takes to do it.” — Ally Carter
63. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act. But a habit.” — Aristotle
64. “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
65. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoraeu
66. “If you are not where you want to be, do not quit. Instead reinvent yourself and change your habits.” — Eric Thomas
67. “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” — Anne Sweeney
68. “Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” — Denis Waitley
69. “The best revenge is massive success.” — Frank Sinatra

    

70. “When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” — Karen E. Quinones Miller
71. “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those doing it.” — Chinese Proverb
72. “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” — Nelson Henderson
73. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
74. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” — Emile Zola
75. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
76. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” — Henry Ford
77. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
78. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Thomas Edison
79. “People who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full miss the point. The glass is refillable.” — Unknown

    

80. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho
81. “The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.” — Tricia Cunningham
82. “Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — Saint Francis
83. “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” — Lou Holtz
84. “You can do anything, but not everything. Prioritize better.” — Unknown
85. “Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.” — John F. Kennedy
86. “Abandon anything about your life and habits that might be holding you back. Learn to create your own opportunities.” — Sophia Amoruso
87. “The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.” — Richard Bach
88. “Failure defeats losers, but it inspires winners.” — Robert Kiyosaki
89. “Your goal should be just out of reach. But not out of sight.” — Remi Witt

    

90. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan and guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” — Jim Rohn
91. “Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” — Ella Fitzgerald
92. “If your dreams don’t scare you, they are too small.” — Richard Branson
93. “Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” — Newt Gingrich
94. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
95. “The future depends on what you do today.” — Mahatma Gandhi
96. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi
97. “Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.” — Patrick Suskind
98. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pelé
99. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky

    

100. “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into visible.” — Tony Robbins
101. “You must want to be a butterfly so badly, you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.“ — Trina Paulus
102. “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” — Banksy
103. “You are not your resume, you are your work.” — Seth Godin
104. “Hard work spotlights the character of people. Some turn up their sleeves. Some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” — Sam Ewing
105. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” — Lao Tzu
106. “What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
107. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
108. “How wonderful is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.“ — Anne Frank
109. “Make each day your masterpiece.” — John Wooden

     

110. “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” — Zig Ziglar
111. “If a mind thinks with a believing attitude, one can do amazing things.” — Norman Vincent Peale
112. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” — Eva Young
113. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs
114. “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” — Meister Eckhart
115. “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” — John C. Maxwell
116. “Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.” — Napoleon Hill
117. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” — Tim Notke
118. “Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.” — Benjamin Disraeli
119. “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein

     

120. “With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.” — Thomas Fowell Buxton
121. “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” — Jimmy Johnson
122. “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers
123. “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford
124. “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” — Confucius
125. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” — Earl Nightingale
126. “A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but its persistence.” — Jim Watkins
127. “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
128. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” — George Lorimer
129. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” — Dale Carnegie

     

130. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
131. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt
132. “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” — Dalai Lama
133. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
134. Think of many things, do one.” — Portuguese Proverb
135. “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.” — Viggo Mortensen
136. “Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.” — Dwayne Johnson
137. “You get to decide where your time goes. You can either spend it moving forward, or you can spend it putting out fires. You decide. And if you don’t decide, others will decide for you.” — Tony Morgan
138. People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” — Tony Robbins
139. “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.” — Thomas J. Watson
140. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” — Colin R. Davis

     

141. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” — Jack Canfield
142. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” — Leonardo Da Vinci
143. “Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” — Brian Tracy
144. “What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110% all the time.” — Don Zimmer
145. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale
146. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart
147. “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” — Vince Lombardi
148. “Never confuse movement with action.” — Ernest Hemingway
149. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.” —Seth Godin

150. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars — I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” — Warren Buffett

151. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” — Alexander Graham Bell

152. “Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” — Carrie Fisher

153. “The key to success is to start before you are ready.” — Marie Forleo

154. “A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius.” — Alex Hormozi

155. “Some of life’s greatest opportunities are in the detours.” — Kevin J. Duncan

156. “Every time I do something that expands my personal comfort boundaries, I discover some strength I didn’t know I had.” — Pamela Wilson

157. “Everything is practice. Every word you write and action you take is a chance to get better.” — Jeff Goins

158. “Learn from your mistakes. The number one reason I see entrepreneurs failing isn’t because they make mistakes, but they keep on making the same ones over and over again. Learn from them and avoid making the same ones over again.” — Neil Patel

159. “Often people focus on their weakness and spend most of their time trying to get better. In my case, I do the opposite. I try to focus on my strengths and see how I can get even better.” — Syed Balkhi

160. “At some point or another, life punches everyone in the face. The punch may be hard, or it may be soft, but it’s definitely coming, and your success or failure is largely determined by the answer to a single question: how well can you take the punch?” — Jon Morrow

161. “We don’t know what we’re capable of until we’re challenged.” — Adam Connell

162. “No true growth comes without opposition. Sadly, humans desperately try to avoid what’s uncomfortable. But what would you do if you knew you could not fail?” — Jaime Buckley

163. “Rather than picking up your next book, take action on your last book.” — Alex Hormozi

164. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk

What are Your Favorite Inspirational Quotes For Work?

Let me know in a comment below!

And don’t forget to bookmark this post before you go. If you ever need words of wisdom or encouragement, these quotes will be standing by to help you.

Have a hankering for more quotes? Check out 267 business quotes that’ll wow and inspire you!

Before you go…

Get Instant Access to my FREE Dopamine Button Guide!

Inside, you’ll discover 3 little-known brain hacks that skyrocket your course engagement & sales…

Here’s the thing: the “old way” of designing and launching courses just isn’t cutting it anymore.

If you want to attract students who buy and keep buying (not to mention send referrals your way!)…

You need to do things differently.

Enter the Dopamine Button — the super-secret button in your students’ brains that you can leverage to create incredible results for them AND repeat sales for you.

Download your copy today!