Finding motivation for your daily work can be a mixed bag.
On some days you wake up and feel alert and inspired from the start.
And on other days you’re tired and feel more like going back to bed than doing anything else.
To help you to find more consistent motivation I’d like to share 165 of the most powerful, helpful and empowering work quotes of the day.
I hope you’ll find something here that gives you a boost of positive energy, a renewed focus and helps you to find the success you want.
Motivational Work Quote of the Day
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
– Jim Rohn
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Dreams can come true, but there is a secret. They’re realized through the magic of persistence, determination, commitment, passion, practice, focus and hard work.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.”
– Stephen R. Covey
“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
– Thomas Edison
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.”
– Dalai Lama
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
– Henry Ford
“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.”
– Denis Waitley
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
– Jim Rohn
“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
– Dale Carnegie
“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
“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
“The future depends on what you do today.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
– Confucius
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
– Saint Francis
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
– Dale Carnegie
“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
– Eva Young
“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
“You will never plough a field if you only turn it over in your mind.”
– Irish Proverb
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”
– Napoleon Hill
“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
– Conrad Hilton
“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
– Alan Wilson Watts
“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
– Albert Einstein
“You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
– George Lorimer
Positive and Inspirational Work Quote of the Day
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you.”
– Walt Whitman
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
– Booker T. Washington
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
– Zig Ziglar
“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
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
– Aristotle
“The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude.”
– Ralph Marston
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
– Confucius
“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
“The harder you work for something, the greater you’ll feel when you achieve it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
– Steve Jobs
“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
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
“Dream big, work hard, stay focused, and surround yourself with good people.”
– Robin Sharma
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
“Make each day your masterpiece.”
– John Wooden
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
– Maya Angelou
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
– Steve Martin
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
– Sam Levenson
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
– Steve Jobs
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
– Henry Ford
“Don’t be busy. Be productive.”
– Tim Ferriss
“The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.”
– Tony Robbins
“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
Work Quote of the Day for When You’ve Made a Mistake or Failed
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
– Dale Carnegie
“If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.”
– Wayne Dyer
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost legendary. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“If something is wrong, fix it now. But train yourself not to worry, worry fixes nothing.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
“You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
– Truman Capote
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
– Richard Branson
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
– Hermann Hesse
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie
“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”
– Peter Marshall
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
– M. Scott Peck
“The best way out is always through.”
– Robert Frost
“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”
– Denis Waitley
“As long as they are well-intentioned, mistakes are not a matter for shame, but for learning.”
– Margaret Heffernan
“Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you someone who has never achieved much.”
– Joan Collins
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
– Bertrand Russell
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
– Helen Keller
“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
– Maya Angelou
“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”
– Harry Golden
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
– Barack Obama
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourselves.”
– Chanakya
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
– John Newton
“It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.”
– Colin Powell
Short Work Quotes of the Day
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
– Tim Notke
“The best way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
– Walt Disney
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.”
– Tim Ferriss
“Light tomorrow with today.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”
– James A. Michener
“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.”
– John C. Maxwell
“If you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working on it.”
– Michael Jordan
“Don’t count the days, make the days count.”
– Muhammad Ali
“The best revenge is massive success.”
– Frank Sinatra
“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
– Suzy Kassem
“Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
– Farrah Gray
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston
“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
“If a mind thinks with a believing attitude, one can do amazing things.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.”
– Richard Bach
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
– Amelia Earhart
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers
“Failure teaches. Failure builds character. Failure is, in a way, a friend.”
– Rip Miller
“Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.”
– Michael Jordan
“Impossible is just an opinion.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not know how close they were when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
– Albert Einstein
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
– Warren Buffett
“Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth
“Make excellence a habit.”
– Aristotle
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
– George Eliot
Funny Work Quotes of the Day
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
– Charles Lamb
“If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.”
– John Gotti
“The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
– Lily Tomlin
“Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.”
– Bill Gates
“Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.”
– Robert Orben
“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”
– Oscar Wilde
“The difference between try and triumph is just a little umph!”
– Marvin Phillips
“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
– Jerome K. Jerome
“The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.”
– Stanley J. Randall
“Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired.”
– Michel Tournier
“The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.”
– Sarah Brown
“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’”
– Dave Barry
“I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need if I die by four o’clock this afternoon.”
– Henry Youngman
“The reward for good work is more work.”
– Tom Sachs
“Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.”
– Earl Nightingale
“The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you’re on the job.”
– Slappy White
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
– Lily Tomlin
“Doing nothing is very hard to do… you never know when you’re finished.”
– Leslie Nielsen
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
– Douglas Adams
“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take the chance?”
– Edgar Bergen
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
– George Carlin
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
– Robert Frost
“My keyboard must be broken, I keep hitting the escape key, but I’m still at work.”
– Bill Murray
“The best excuse for not going to work is that you’re already there.”
– Jim Gaffigan
Quote of the Day on Hard Work and Success
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
– Mark Twain
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
– Muhammad Ali
“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”
– Peter Drucker
“Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor.”
– Brian Tracy
“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”
– Seneca
“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
– Bruce Lee
“Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
– Peter Drucker
“Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.”
– Joseph Barbara
“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goals: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.”
– Louis Pasteur
“Don’t be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it.”
– Gertrude B. Elion
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
– Olin Miller
“It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.”
– Confucius
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
– Stephen Covey
“Plenty of men can do good work for a spurt and with immediate promotion in mind, but for promotion you want a man in whom good work has become a habit.”
– Henry L. Doherty
“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
– Stephen King
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
– Beverly Sills
“I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.”
– Jim Carrey
“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
– David Allen
“A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.”
– Mildred Struven
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
– David Allen
“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
– Francis Chan
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
– Vince Lombardi
“Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well as now.”
– Margaret Fuller
“Think of many things; do one.”
– Portuguese proverb
“There is no traffic jam along the extra mile.”
– Roger Staubach
Want more inspiration for your day? Then check out these inspirational quotes of the day, the short happy quotes in this post, the inspirational good morning quotes here and also this one that’s all about living a positive life.