101 inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs

Inevitably, life as an entrepreneur can sometimes get you down. Here are some words of wisdom and motivation from men and women who made it through, to drive you to success.

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Henry Ford

“Entrepreneurs are willing to work an 80 hour work to avoid a 40 hour week” Lori Greiner

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” Chinese proverb

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky

“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” Farrah Gray

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Tony Robbins

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” Beverly Sills

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” Ayn Rand

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” Steve Jobs

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Stephen Covey

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” Aristotle

“Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” Teddy Roosevelt

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” George Addair

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less travelled, and that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost

“Do it or not. There is no try.” Yoda

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Lao Tzu

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Woody Allen

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Henry Ford

“You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground.” Unknown

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” Joshua Marine

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese proverb

“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” Florence Nightingale

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”? Peter Drucker

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”? Vince Lombardi

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”? Bill Gates

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”? Warren Buffett

“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you.” Jeff Bezos

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”? Albert Einstein

“As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”? Donald Trump

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”? Winston Churchill

“Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” Thomas Edison

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”? Napoleon Hill

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Bill Cosby

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”? Warren G. Tracy’s student

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”? Ralph Nader

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”? Bill Gates

“Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” Ryan Freitas

“Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.” Anthony Volodkin

“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

“If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” Jeff Bezos

“Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” Jeffrey Zeldman

“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” Tony Hsieh

“Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” Jack Dorsey

“The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” Ingvar Kamprad

“Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” Mark Cuban

“Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” Drew Houston

“Nothing works better than just improving your product.” Joel Spolsky

“It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.” Edwin Land

“It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.” Paul Graham

“Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.” David Karp

“Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch.” Michael Arrington

“The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” Rob Kalin

“Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.” Tony Hsieh

“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” Guy Kawasaki

“Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.” Joel Spolsky

“I doubt I’ll ever go back to corporate work. Once you see the light, there is no turning back.” Magnus Jepson

“Stay self funded as long as possible.” Garrett Camp

“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” Biz Stone

“No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week.” Spencer Fry

“The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.” Marc Benioff

“I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.” Jake Nickell

“See things in the present, even if they are in the future.” Larry Ellison

“You can’t make anything viral, but you can make something good.” Peter Shankman

“It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.” Jason Cohen

“Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.” Noah Everett

“Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” Michael Dell

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” Jeff Bezos

“A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about – 1. What its product is. 2. Who its customers are. 3. How to make money.” Dave McClure

“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.” Reid Hoffman

“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” Reid Hoffman

“The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” Reid Hoffman

“In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” Steve Case

“Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.” Tony Hsieh

“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.” Henry Ford

“Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” Bruce Levin

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.” Benjamin Franklin

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” Walt Disney

“A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.” Fred Wilson

“We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.” Pete Cashmore

“Always deliver more than expected.” Larry Page

“I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” Bill Gates

“You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” Reid Hoffman

“I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.” Harland Sanders

“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” Caterina Fake

“Trust your instincts.” Estee Lauder

“If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.” Ray Kroc

“Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle.” Wendy Tan White

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates

“If you define yourself by how you differ from the competition, you’re probably in trouble.” Omar Hamoui

“When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” Josh James

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