These business quotes are more than just words on a page. Many of us aspire to become successful business people, but the journey to get there can be intimidating and uncertain at times.
Let these quotes serve as powerful reminders to keep you focused on your goals, motivated through challenges, and inspired to keep pushing forward.
I hope you find as much value in them as I have.
So let’s dive into these powerful words from some of the greatest minds in business!
Business quotes to help you level up
1. “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
2. “Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation.” – Peter Drucker
3. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
4. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
5. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” – Josh James
6. “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” – Peter Drucker
7. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational business quotes
8. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
9. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” – Thomas Jefferson
10. “Success is not in what you have, but who you are.” – Bo Bennett
11. “The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.” – Lance Armstrong
12. “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” – Peter Drucker
13. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
14. “The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.” – Charles Schwab
15. “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” – Biz Stone
Motivational business quotes to help get unstuck
16. “Business is more exciting than any game.” – Lord Beaverbrook
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17. “Meeting the deadlines is not good enough, beating the deadlines is my expectation.” – Dhirubhai Ambani
18. “Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” – Winston Churchill
19. “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
20. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
21. “Play by the rules, but be ferocious.” – Phil Knight
22. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” – Ingvar Kamprad
23. “Show me a person who never made a mistake, and I will show you a person who never did anything.” – William Rosenberg
Short powerful business quotes
24. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” – Norman Schwarzkopf
25. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” – Albert Schweitzer
26. “A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.” – William Feather
27. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
28. “I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
29. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
30. “Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the boom.” – Jason Calacanis
Quotes for business owners
31. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
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32. “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates
33. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
34. “The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.” – Marc Benioff
35. “Success is not just about making money. It’s about making a difference.” – Michelle Obama
36. “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” – Ryan Freitas
37. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
The ups and downs of running a business quotes
38. “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz
39. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
40. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
41. “Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.” – Tim Westergen
42. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
43. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis
44. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
45. “Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow.” – Oprah Winfrey
46. “Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them.” – Seth Godin
Encouraging quotes for business owners
47. “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
48. “Your income is directly related to your philosophy, not the economy.” – Jim Rohn
49. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
50. “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.” – Brian Chesky
51. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffett
52. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” – Guy Kawasaki
53. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
54. “If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” – Jeff Bezos
55. “Succeeding is not really a life experience that does that much good.” – Frank Sinatra
Powerful business quotes
56. “Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure.” – Aisha Tyler
57. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates
58. “Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.” – Unknown
59. “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
60. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing.” – Pele
61. “Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” – Roy T. Bennett
62. “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates
63. “Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” – Napoleon Hill
64. “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” – George S. Patton
65. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” – Booker T. Washington
66. “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D. Rockefeller
Success quotes for business
67. “Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” – Joyce Brothers
68. “Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.” – Paul J. Meyer
69. “Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.” – Arnold H. Glasow 70. 70. “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” – Sumner Redstone
71. “Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.” – Jim Rohn
72. “Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.” – Ambrose Bierce
73. “Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve.” – Wilfred Peterson
74. “Success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal.” – Don Shula
75. “Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.” – Johnny Cash
76. “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
77. “Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration, and inspiration.” – Evan Esar
78. “Success is 99% failure.” – Soichiro Honda
79. “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” – Dale Carnegie
80. “Success is more than a desire; it’s a behavior. Act accordingly.” – Steve Maraboli
81. “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” – Jim Rohn
Empowering business quotes about success
82. “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
83. “Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.” – Tony Robbins
84. “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” – Jim Rohn
85. “Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.” – Margaret Thatcher
86. “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.” – Jon Bon Jovi
87. “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” – Colin Powell
88. “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” – Bobby Unser
89. “Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.” – An Wang
90. “Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.” – Zig Ziglar
91. “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” – Arnold H. Glasow
Quotes about business and evolving
92. “Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
93. “To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.” – J. Paul Getty
94. “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department; it should be the entire company.” – Tony Hsieh
95. “In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve.” – Jeff Bezos
96. “The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell.” – Andrew Carnegie
97. “There is only one boss: the customer.” – Sam Walton
98. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” – Jack Dorsey
99. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities, and don’t let the bastards get you down.” – Michael Bloomberg
Positive quotes for business owners
100. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” – Warren Buffett
101. “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos
102. “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
103. “Do not focus on numbers. Focus on doing what you do best.” – Cassey Ho
104. “It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter
105. “Without a customer, you don’t have a business—all you have is a hobby.” – Don Peppers
Quotes for new business opening
106. “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” – Steve Jobs
107. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett
108. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
109. “Business is a combination of war and sport.” – André Maurois
110. You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop an idea.” – Larry Page
111. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne
112. “The goal of a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.” – Sam Walton
113. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
114. “Do or do not; there is no try.” – Yoda
115. “Trust is built with consistency.” – Lincoln Chafee
116. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” – Henry Ford
Business encouragement quotes
117. “Data beats emotions.” – Sean Rad
118. “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” – Thomas Watson
119. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
120. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
121. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
122. “Don’t be evil.” – Google’s unofficial corporate motto
123. Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
124. “If you can’t tolerate critics, don’t do anything new or interesting.” – Jeff Bezos
125. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” – Michael LeBoeuf
126. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt
127. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
Best business motivational quotes
128. “Turn a perceived risk into an asset.” – Aaron Patzer
129. “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t — you’re right.” – Henry Ford
130. “Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln
131. “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” – Seth Godin
132. “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” – Will Rogers
133. “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” – Coco Chanel
134. “Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.” – Stephen Covey
135. “You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.” – Michael Dell
136. “Life is too complicated not to be orderly.” – Martha Stewart
137. “Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.” – Jack Welch
Business quotes to live by
138. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John R. Wooden
139. “All lasting business is built on friendship.” – Alfred A. Montapert
140. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
141. “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar
142. “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
143. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein
144. “If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late.” – James Goldsmith
145. Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
146. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
147. “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work.” – David Rockefeller
148. “A goal without a timeline is just a dream.” – Robert Herjavec
149. “Success is not what you have, but who you are.” – Bo Bennett
150. “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is.” – Mark Cuban
151. “You get what you focus on, so focus on what you want.” – Unknown
152. “Don’t try to do everything by yourself, but try to connect with people and resources. Having that discipline and perseverance is really important.” – Chieu Cao
Final thoughts
In business, it’s not only the numbers and profits that matter, it’s also about building a strong reputation, being customer-focused, and staying true to your values.
These quotes from successful business leaders serve as reminders to stay passionate, creative, and persistent in pursuing your goals.
Remember that success is a journey that will always be filled with obstacles and challenges.
But with determination, consistency and hard work, you can achieve your dreams and make a lasting impact in the business world.
So go out there, take risks, and never stop learning and innovating!
Helping people and eating tacos are my jam! This blog exists to help provide tips and resources that can help you achieve your goals and live a better life. Whether you’re looking for tips on personal growth, fitness, advice on starting a side hustle, or resources for working remotely, I’ve got you covered.
