Success at work often feels like a moving target. To stay motivated, it’s helpful to have a few success quotes for work to lean on. These quotes inspire action, boost productivity, and remind you why being persistent is so important.
So, whether you’re looking for a daily dose of motivation or simply want to expand your knowledge, take a moment to explore these 150 wisdom-filled success quotes for work.
10 Easiest To Remember Success Quotes For Work
1. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
2. “Success is no accident.” – Pele
3. “Dream big and dare to fail.” – Norman Vaughan
4. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
5. “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
6. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
7. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke
8. “Success is not in what you have, but who you are.” – Bo Bennett
9. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
10. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
Success Quotes For Work Productivity
11. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
12. “Focus on being productive instead of busy.” – Tim Ferriss
13. “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer
14. “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.” – William Butler Yeats
15. “It’s not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.” – Nathan W. Morris
16. “You don’t need more time in your day. You just need to decide.” – Seth Godin
17. “Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin
18. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
19. “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
20. “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.” – Peter Drucker
21. “Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” – Franz Kafka
22. “Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.” – Leo Babauta
23. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
24. “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey
25. “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
26. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee
Success Quotes For Work To Thrive In The Work Environment
27. “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
28. “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
29. “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
30. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie
31. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson
32. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
33. “The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.” – Oscar Wilde
34. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paulo Coelho
35. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
36. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
37. “The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible.” – Charles Kingsleigh, from the film “Alice in Wonderland”
38. “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler
39. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock
40. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs
41. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” – James Cash Penney
42. “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” – Oprah Winfrey
Success Quotes For Work To Achieve Career Goals
43. “Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.” – Bo Jackson
44. “The future depends on what you do today.” – Mahatma Gandhi
45. “Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.” – Roy T. Bennett
46. “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
47. “If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission.” – Anonymous
48. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar
49. “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” – Earl Nightingale
50. “You are your own best choice. Show up to represent that every day.” – Anonymous
51. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
52. “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
53. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
54. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
55. “You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.” – Booker T. Washington
56. “Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do.’’– Anonymous
57. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.” – Mary Kay Ash
58. “A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.” – Bruce Lee
Success Quotes For Work To Overcome Obstacles
59. “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” – Molière
60. “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford
61. “The only way to overcome challenges is to confront them head-on.” – Anonymous
62. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
64. “The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph.” – George Washington
65. “Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” – Dan Reeves
66. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
67. “We don’t develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” – Barbara De Angelis
68. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine
69. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
70. “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
71. “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” – Jean de La Bruyère
72. “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 while trying to succeed.” – Booker T. Washington
73. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
74. “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
Success Quotes For Work When Dealing With Failure
75. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
76. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
77. “Failure is a rebirth. It is the start of something new, not the end.” – Unknown
78. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford
79. “Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.” – Arianna Huffington
80. “Do not be embarrassed by your failures; learn from them and start again.” – Richard Branson
81. “A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.” – B.F. Skinner
82. “Every failure is a step to success.” – William Whewell
83. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Nelson Mandela
84. “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.” – George Eliot
85. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
86. “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” – Sumner Redstone
87. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” – C.S. Lewis
88. “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” – Brené Brown
89. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates
90. “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield
Success Quotes For Work When Managing Stress
91. “Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” – Benjamin Franklin
92. “It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.” – Hans Selye
93. “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James
94. “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” – Chinese Proverb
95. “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” – Leo F. Buscaglia
96. “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.” – Eckhart Tolle
97. “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
98. “The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” – Sydney J. Harris
99. “Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries.” – Astrid Alauda
100. “Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.” – Mark Black
101. “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” – Steve Maraboli
102. “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot
103. “Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.” – Hans Selye
104. “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
105. “Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.” – Dalai Lama
106. “In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.” – Lee Iacocca
107. “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
108. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine—and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman
109. “Calmness is the cradle of power.” – Josiah Gilbert Holland
110. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard
111. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
112. “You can’t always control what goes on outside, but you can always control what goes on inside.” – Wayne Dyer
113. “Doing something that is productive is a great way to alleviate emotional stress. Get your mind doing something that is productive.” – Ziggy Marley
114. “Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” – Walter Anderson
115. “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” – Amit Ray
116. “Success is the child of audacity.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Success Quotes For Work To Inspire Creativity & Innovation
117. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein
118. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein
119. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
120. “Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” – Edward de Bono
121. “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” – Dr. Seuss
122. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
123. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay
124. “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.” – Michael Jordan
125. “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.” – Albert Einstein
126. “Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.” – Napoleon Hill
127. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes
128. “Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse
129. “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein
130. “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” – Stephen Hawking
131. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
132. “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
133. “An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” – Edwin Land
134. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Ken Robinson
135. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pearce
136. “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” – William Plomer
Success Quotes For Work To Inspire Leadership
137. “Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.” – Simon Sinek
138. “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
139. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John C. Maxwell
140. “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John C. Maxwell
141. “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
142. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
143. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
144. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
145. “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” – Ray Kroc
146. “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
147. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
148. “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” – Tony Blair
149. “Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.” – Harold S. Geneen
150. “A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Conclusion
Success starts with the right inspiration. It keeps you focused on your goals and gives you the strength to push through any challenges. Whenever you encounter obstacles, use these thoughtful success quotes to refocus and boost your motivation.
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FAQs
What are some effective success quotes for boosting productivity at work?
Success quotes that emphasize focus, dedication, and smart work can boost productivity. Quotes like “Focus on being productive instead of busy” by Tim Ferriss and “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” by Walt Disney encourage taking action and managing time effectively.
How can success quotes help overcome obstacles at work?
Success quotes can provide motivation and a fresh perspective when facing challenges. For example, the quote “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” by Albert Einstein reminds you to look for growth and learning opportunities even in tough situations. This mindset can help you push through difficulties with resilience.
Are success quotes effective in managing stress in the workplace?
Yes, success quotes can be a great way of managing stress at work. They can shift your mindset from worry to focus and calm. For instance, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another” by William James suggests that controlling your thoughts can reduce stress.
How can I use success quotes to inspire my team?
Incorporating success quotes into team meetings, emails, or office spaces can boost morale and motivation. Quotes like “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people” by Steve Jobs can promote a sense of teamwork and collective effort, helping your team stay united and motivated.
