It’s an amazing feeling being your own boss and as an entrepreneur or business owner, you feel like you are in control of your destiny. There will be times when you will feel discouraged and lazy, especially when your dreams seem to be farther away than you imagine. Those are the times when you need a boost of inspiration to get back into high spirits! If you want to be a successful entrepreneur or freelancer, you simply cannot afford to let the tough times last! Doubts and worries are not part of the menu and here is the perfect pick-me-up of inspirational quotes for a wide range of situations that entrepreneurs find themselves experiencing.
One thing that today’s entrepreneur benefits from those in the past are amazing highly inspirational quotes from the well-known entrepreneurs that pass across essential messages in few words. They say a few words are always enough for the wise, and who better to give you advice than someone who has walked the same road that you now do and done so successfully? You’re in luck, because here are our top 50 inspirational quotes by highly successful entrepreneurs that will have you revved up and ready to face any challenges!
50.
When a business becomes successful seemingly overnight, no one knows about all the months and years you've invested, all the projects you've tried before that didn't work.
— Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype
49.
That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner's permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don't have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person.
— Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Interscope Records
48.
Failure is awesome. Failure means you tried something, you tested it, and you learned some things. Failure gives you the tools to move forward.
— Leah Busque, American entrepreneur who founded TaskRabbit
47.
Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.
— Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb
46.
Have big goals—but don’t tie your happiness to your goals. You must be happy before you attain them.
— Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder and CEO of Mindvalley
45.
Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure.
— Soichiro Honda
44.
Its easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor.
— Ray Kroc, McDonald's founding chairman
43.
The wise man is not he who gives the right answers; he is the one who asks the right questions.
— Claude Lévi-Strauss
42.
The typical human life seems to be quite unplanned, undirected, unlived, and unsavored. Only those who consciously think about the adventure of living as a matter of making choices among options, which they have found for themselves, ever establish real self-control and live their lives fully.
— Karl Albrecht, German entrepreneur co-founder of supermarket chain Aldi
41.
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
― Timothy Ferriss, American entrepreneur, author, and podcaster
40.
I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
— J. K. Rowling
39.
You really have to love every single bit of what you do. The moment that you do something that makes you feel queasy to your stomach, the company dies.
— Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress
38.
Success is never final; failure is never fatal.
— Conrad Hilton
37.
Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world. You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.
— Gary Vaynerchuk, Belarusian-American entrepreneur, New York Times best selling author
36.
Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining.
— Michael Arrington, American founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch
35.
The IKEA spirit is strong and living reality. Simplicity in our behavior gives us strength. Simplicity and humbleness characterize us in our relations with each others, our suppliers and our customers.
— Ingvar Kamprad, Swedish entrepreneur and founder of IKEA
34.
The person passionate about what he or she is doing will outwork and outlast the guy motivated solely by making money.
— Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
33.
Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.
— Indra Nooyi, Indian American entrepreneur former CEO of PepsiCo
32.
So the pie isn’t perfect? Cut it into wedges. Stay in control, and never panic.
— Martha Stewart
31.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.
— Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club
30.
Kids only learn that the stove is hot when they put their finger on and they burn it. This, unfortunately, is the limitation of our precious brain.
— Hasso Plattner, German businessman co-founder of SAP SE
29.
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
— Jack Ma, co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group
28.
We think mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of the time we put in at work, instead of the quality of the time we put in.
— Arianna Huffington
27.
Mistakes are normal and human. Make them small, accept them, correct them, and forget them.
— Carlos Slim Helú, Mexican business tycoon
26.
I've only had two rules: Do all you can and do it the best you can. It's the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something.
— Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken
25.
My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don't care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that - building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.
— Mark Zuckerberg
24.
As you become more successful, the gender barrier disappears. The credibility challenges you have during your growing up years start disappearing when you start demonstrating success.
— Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Indian billionaire entrepreneur
23.
Feeling has as much to say as the words do. You can have the greatest words in the world and if they're not believable, they don't strike a chord and they're not said convincingly, it's not a great song.
— Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio
22.
I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.
— Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Nintendo's iconic video game franchises
21.
But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.
— Nikola Tesla
20.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
— Henry Ford
19.
If you really go all in, you go all in. Keep trying. If your original idea isn’t working, use what you’ve built to pivot into something else. Keep trying to find a solution to people’s problems.
— Jan Koum, Ukrainian American entrepreneur and co-founder of WhatsApp
18.
As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live.
— Richard Branson
17.
I didn't have a business degree. I didn't have experience to work in somebody else's office. I never built or ran a department. So I was on this journey, and when the time came to make a decision, I was just going with my gut.
— Hamdi Ulukaya, Turkish-Kurdish billionaire businessman and philanthropist
16.
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
— Andrew Carnegie
15.
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.
— Mark Cuban, American entrepreneur and investor
14.
If you can dream, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse.
— Walt Disney
13.
You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.
— Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle Corporation
12.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
— Bill Gates
11.
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price, than a fair company at a wonderful price.
— Warren Buffett
10.
Coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what’s key.
— Sergey Brin
9.
There are people who have money and people who are rich.
— Coco Chanel
8.
There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.
— Elon Musk
7.
It is easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition.
— Larry Page
6.
If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.
— Jeff Bezos
5.
If You Are Working On Something That You Really Care About, You Don’t Have To Be Pushed. The Vision Pulls You.
— Steve Jobs
4.
I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade… And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.
— Ron White, American stand-up comedian, actor and author
3.
When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard’, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?
— Sydney Harris, American journalist
2.
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
— Robert Frost, American poet
1.
If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.
— Steven Wright, American stand-up comedian
