Running a business can be full of all sorts of highs and lows. The challenges can drive you to be better but also crush you with their severity. When you’re feeling down, you can always turn to sources of inspiration to buoy your spirits and remind you why you started the company in the first place.
As you busy yourself learning how to grow your business, the following business quotes can help ignite your entrepreneurship mindset once again. And since many of these quotes come from successful entrepreneurs in their own right, think of them like snippets of valuable life lessons that can help you find success.
Inspirational Business Quotes to Reinvigorate Your Entrepreneurial Spirit
“The best revenge is massive success.” —Frank Sinatra
“What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” —Dave Thomas
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” —Guy Kawasaki
“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” —Tony Hsieh
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” —Walt Disney
“Employees want to feel inspired by their leaders…hire individuals who will lead by example.” —Jody Kohner
“In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” —Steve Case
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” —J.K. Rowling
“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” —Tim O’Reilly
“Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.” —Sara Blakely
“The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.” —Seth Godin
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” —Reid Hoffman
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” —Steve Jobs
“The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.” —Sergey Brin
“I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” —Estee Lauder
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” —Jim Rohn
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t—you’re right.” —Henry Ford
“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” —Charles F. Kettering
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” —Napoleon Hill
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” —Vince Lombardi
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” —Stephen Covey
“The stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.” —Tim Ferriss
“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” —Dhirubhai Ambani
“The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” —Rob Kalin
“I do not know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” —Susan Butcher
“It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.” —Jason Cohen
“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” —Albert Einstein
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” —Theodore Roosevelt
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” —Earl Nightingale
“You know, you don’t have to have money to be a successful businessperson. You don’t need a college degree, you just need a lot of common sense backed up by a willingness to work hard.” —Farrah Gray
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures; learn from them and start again.” —Richard Branson
“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember—the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.” —Zig Ziglar
“There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” —Ray Goforth
“I failed my way to success.” —Thomas Edison
“Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” —Dale Carnegie
“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” —Babe Ruth
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” —Albert Schweitzer
“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” —Thomas Watson
“If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late.” —James Goldsmith
“Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give—with a few exceptions—generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.” —Ben Silbermann
“Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” —Alan Turing
“Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” —Jeffrey Zeldman
“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.” —Reid Hoffman
“Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.” —Lisa Stone
“Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.” —Gary Vaynerchuck
“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” —William Durant
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.” —Colin Powell
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” —Thomas Jefferson
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” —Henry David Thoreau
“You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.” —Oprah Winfrey
“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” —Warren Buffett
“Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying into space.” —Chris Hadfield
“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” —Mark Cuban
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure—It is: Try to please everybody.” —Herbert Bayard Swope
“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.” —John Maxwell
“Play by the rules, but be ferocious.” —Phil Knight
“Lean forward into your life. Begin each day as if it were on purpose.” —Mary Anne Radmacher
“When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” —Josh James
“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” —Golda Meir
“Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once.” —Drew Houston
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” —Walt Disney
“The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.” —Dennis Waitley
“If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” —Zig Ziglar
“Always deliver more than expected.” —Larry Page
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” —Jeff Bezos
“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” —Sam Levenson
“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 Watson
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” —Michael Jordan
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” —John D. Rockefeller
Time to Get to Work
If there’s one thing to learn from the above business quotes, it’s that to earn success you have to get to work. No amount of time spent thinking and dreaming will do much good if it’s not accompanied by hard work. Now that you feel inspired, you can start putting in the work to see your company become more successful.
To achieve success, you’ll also need to focus on continuous learning and improvement. Make a habit of reading industry publications, attending conferences and workshops, and seeking out guidance from others. When you invest in your own growth, you’ll become a more effective leader and position your company for long-term success. Remember, success doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a journey that requires constant effort and dedication.
And if you’re in need of a little extra help, here are some tips on writing a business plan.