Small business owners can always use an encouraging word to keep them motivated to reach their business goals. Thanks to the distinguished entrepreneurs, thought leaders and influential figures who blazed the trail before us, there’s an endless supply of business wisdom to inspire us.
The BrandMakerNews team compiled 75 powerful quotes to ignite and fuel your entrepreneurial journey… Enjoy and good luck!
- “The man who has no imagination has no wings.” – Muhammad Ali
- “In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.” -Harold Geneen
- “I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.” -Warren Buffet
- “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.” -Jim Rohn
- “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
- “I want to do it because I want to do it.” – Amelia Earhart
- “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” – Mother Teresa
- “Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.” – W. Clement Stone
- “If you can DREAM it, you can DO it.” – Walt Disney
- “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is like a broken wing’d bird that can not fly.” – Langston Hughes
- “Life without risks is not worth living.” – Charles A. Lindbergh
- “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti
- “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” – Donald Trump
- “Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.” – Harriet Rubin
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison
- “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” Jim Rohn
- “Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.” -Anita Roddick
- “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” – Thomas J. Watson
- “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” – Jonathan Winters
- “I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.” – Dolly Parton
- “What a pity that so many people rather believe their doubts and doubt their beliefs… Why don’t we just decide to have no doubts, and believe our beliefs! Fear and worry is just the misuse of the creative powers we originally got to dream.” – Jannie Putter
- “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect .” – Adam Osborne
- “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” -Henry Ford
- “If you want to get somewhere you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up.” – Norman Vincent Peale
- “Nothing happens unless first a dream.” – Carl Sandburg
- “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” -Les Brown
- “Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill
- “You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.” – Gen. Colin Powell
- “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar
- “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “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 don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.” – Robert Bosch
- “You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.” — Joan Baez
- “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” -Jim Rohn
- “Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.” – Earl Nightingale
- “Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.” – Liz Smith
- “My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.” -Paul Getty
- “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The people and circumstances around me do not MAKE me what I am, they REVEAL who I am. ” – Dr. Laura Schlessinger
- “Work and play are the same. When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.” – Shakti Gawain
- “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” – Jeremy Kitson
- “The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.” – Louise Hay
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Be awfully nice to them going up, because you’re going to meet them all coming down.” -Jimmy Durante
- “You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.” – Katharine Hepburn
- “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan
- “There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way” – Jim Rohn
- “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
- “It only takes one person to change your life – you.” – Ruth Casey
- “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.” – John Wooden
- “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson
- “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon
- “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I think there is something more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers. There aren’t enough who will move ahead and take concrete steps to actualize their vision.” -W. Clement Stone
- “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” -Mark Twain
- “The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “If you are clear about what you want, the world responds with clarity.” – Loretta Staples
- “A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.” -Henry Kravis
- “If you are serious about your goals, drop the conditions. Go directly to your goal. Be your goal! Conditions often disguise strategies for escaping accountability. Why not just take charge and create the experience you are looking for?” – Eric Allenbaugh
- “In order to achieve something great, you’ll have to sacrifice something great.” -David Harley
- “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our Attitudes.” – Charles Swindoll
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton
- “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.” – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
- “God gives talent, work transforms talent into genius.” – Anna Pavlova
- “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- When the going gets tough, the tough get going. -Joseph P. Kennedy
- “Realism is for pessimists. An optimist creates his own reality.” – David Harley
- “No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” – Calvin Coolidge
- “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” – Bill Cosby
- “Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.” – Bruce Barton
- “If you don’t quit, and don’t cheat, and don’t run home when trouble arrives, you can only win.” – Shelley Long
- “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” – Winston Churchill
- “If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal. – Zig Ziglar