Running a business can – in my experience – feel overwhelming, confusing and like you’re heading into the unknown quite often.
But there’s also an exhilarating excitement when you learn something new, when you make a change that pays off and just a lot of freedom and satisfaction in the everyday work as a business owner.
And in today’s post I’d like to share timeless wisdom to inspire you if you want to start your own business or improve your current one. This is 160 of the most powerful, helpful and motivational business quotes.
I hope they will inspire you to get started and to keep going through the tough times, to help you to grow as a person and with your business and to find the success you dream of.
Inspirational Business Quotes for Motivation
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
– Lao Tzu
“Never ever give up! Constant effort is the key to success.”
– Xavier Davis
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
– Pablo Picasso
“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.”
– Socrates
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
– Henry Ford
“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
– Sam Levenson
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
– Walt Disney
“Never give up. Great things take time.”
– Winston Churchill
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
– Seth Godin
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
– Peter F. Drucker
“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.”
– Sam Walton
“Make a customer, not a sale.”
– Katherine Barchetti
“You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.”
– Dale Carnegie
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
– Walt Disney
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it.”
– Earl Nightingale
“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
– Robert H. Schuller
“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”
– OG Mandino
“Everything starts with the customer.”
– Lou Gerstner
“Always give your best effort even when the odds are against you.”
– Arnold Palmer
Inspirational Business Quotes for Growth
“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.”
– Chris Grosser
“There is no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.”
– Seth Godin
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”
– Michael Jordan
“Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset.”
– Sara Blakely
“To be successful, you must act big, think big and talk big.”
– Aristotle Onassis
“Great things in business are never done by one person.”
– Steve Jobs
“Patience: This is the greatest business asset. Wait for the right time to make your moves.”
– J. Paul Getty
“Capital isn’t scarce. Vision is.”
– Sam Walton
“To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”
– Bill Gates
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter F. Drucker
“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
– H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“Setting a goal is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
– Tony Robbins
“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great achievements.”
– Demosthenes
“One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.”
– Michael Korda
“The heart and soul of a company is creativity and innovation.”
– Robert Iger
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
– Steve Jobs
“Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.”
– Kevin Stirtz
“In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.”
– Nikos Kazantzakis
“You must not only aim right but draw the bow with all your might.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.”
– Sun Tzu
“The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.”
– Roy L. Smith
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”
– Jeff Bezos
“Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.”
– Chris Dixon
“If you define yourself by how you differ from the competition, you’re probably in trouble.”
– Omar Hamoui
“Nothing works better than just improving your product.”
– Joel Spolsky
Inspirational Business Quotes for Success
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
“If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.”
– Pierre Omidyar
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
– Steve Jobs
“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
– Napoleon Hill
“Real prosperity is the result of well-placed confidence in ourselves and our fellow man.”
– Benjamin Burt
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
– Vidal Sassoon
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
– John D. Rockefeller
“Always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.”
– Michelle Obama
“There’s no luck in business. There’s only drive, determination and more drive.”
– Sophie Kinsella
“If your business is not on the internet then your business will be out of business.”
– Bill Gates
“All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.”
– Richard Branson
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
– Steve Jobs
“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.”
– Peter Drucker
“You have to work on the business first before it works for you.”
– Idowu Koyenikan
“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”
– Harold Geneen
“The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.”
– John Hancock
“You don’t build a business. You build people and people build the business.”
– Zig Ziglar
“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
– Peter Drucker
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
– Henry Ford
“Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners.”
– Robert T. Kiyosaki
“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
“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”
– Coco Chanel
“Success isn’t about avoiding failure; it’s about growing from it.”
– Neil Patel
“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”
– Richard Branson
“Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.”
– General George Patton Jr.
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
Inspirational Business Quotes on Entrepreneurship
“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”
– Walt Disney
“See things in the present, even if they are in the future.”
– Larry Ellison
“Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.”
– Michael Dell
“All humans are entrepreneurs, not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.”
– Reid Hoffman
“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.”
– Aristotle
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
– C.S. Lewis
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
– Bruce Lee
“I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
– Rikki Rogers
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.”
– Walt Whitman
“You can’t be successful in business without taking risks. It’s really that simple.”
– Adena Friedman
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
– Truman Capote
“If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan.”
– Mark Zuckerberg
“Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.”
– Paul Rand
“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.”
– Tony Hsieh
“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
“Stay self-funded as long as possible.”
– Garrett Camp
“Data beats emotions.”
– Sean Rad
“The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.”
– Ingvar Kamprad
Inspirational Quotes for Small Business Owners
“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
“Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it.”
– Kim Garst
“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
– Albert Einstein
“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”
– Bob Hooey
“When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.”
– Arnold Palmer
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
– Damon Richards
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: The fear of failure.”
– Paulo Coelho
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston
“The biggest mistake a small business can make is to think like a small business.”
– Aruna Bhayana
“To be successful you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”
– Thomas J. Watson
“A winner never stops trying.”
– Tom Landry
“Know what your customer wants most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.”
– Kevin Stirtz
“Every company’s greatest assets are its customers because without customers there is no company.”
– Michael LeBoeuf
“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”
– Donald Porter
“Great customer service is a critical competitive advantage for a business.”
– Steve Benson
“There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.”
– Jason Fried
“Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.”
– Noah Everett
“Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”
– Jack Dorsey
“If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.”
– Jeff Bezos
“Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.”
– James Cash Penny
“The well-satisfied customer will bring the repeat sale that counts.”
– James Cash Penney
“The customer is why we are here. If we take good care of them, they’ll give us good reason to come back.”
– Stanley Marcus
“Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.”
– Mark Pincus
“If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.”
– Jeff Bezos
“What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.”
– Cheryl Strayed
Inspirational Business Quotes from Great Leaders
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
– Jack Welch
“Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization.”
– Indra Nooyi
“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.”
– Brian Tracy
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel.”
– Sam Walton
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
– Peter Drucker
“The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.”
– Kenneth H. Blanchard
“Leadership is an action, not a position.”
– Donald McGannon
“Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
– Margaret Thatcher
“Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.”
– Herb Kelleher
“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
“A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.”
– Fred Wilson
“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”
– Simon Sinek
“The best leaders are the ones who are disproportionately self-aware and have the ability to be the bigger person when the going gets tough.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
– John C. Maxwell
“True leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.”
– Tom Peters
“Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.”
– Simon Sinek
“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
– Ralph Nader
“A good leader leads the people from above them. A great leader leads the people from within them.”
– M.D. Arnold
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
– John F. Kennedy
“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets people to do the greatest things.”
– Ronald Reagan
“If we don’t understand people, we don’t understand business.”
– Simon Sinek
“When you’re a leader, you work for your team. They don’t work for you.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
Short Inspirational Business Quotes
“Be undeniably good.”
– Anthony Volodkin
“First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
– Walt Disney
“Every problem is an opportunity.”
– Peter Drucker
“Change is opportunity.”
– Jack Welch
“Create value first, profit second.”
– Tony Hsieh
“Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”
– Henry Ford
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”
– Scott Belsky
“Learn from failure.”
– Bill Gates
“Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.”
– Lisa Stone
“Focus on the solution, not the problem.”
– Jim Rohn
“Always deliver more than expected.”
– Larry Page
“Dream big. Start small.”
– Simon Sinek
“Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
– Steve Jobs
“My job as CEO is to put players in the position to succeed.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
“Do what you love.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
“Begin anywhere.”
– John Cage
“Start now. Start where you are.”
– Marie Forleo
“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.”
– Guy Kawasaki
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
– Aristotle
“What leaders have to do is take themselves on and have the courage to say ‘I have more to learn’.”
– Simon Sinek
“Innovation never stops.”
– Steve Jobs
Want more motivation and inspiration? Have a look at these inspirational leadership quotes, the success quotes in this post also these teamwork quotes.