Entrepreneurship and business is an art that requires hard work and dedication. The world is filled with extremely successful entrepreneurs that have come to revolutionize the world in one way or another. But regardless if you’re a small business owner in your city or are looking to build a worldwide brand, entrepreneurs have the power to change people’s lives for the better, even if just a tiny bit.
Whether you are serving hundreds of millions, it can be a very empowering and motivating feeling to know that you are helping people in one way or another.
Below, we take a closer look at some of the most well-known and inspirational quotes about and by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. These quotes can be valuable for inspiration, giving you tips on how to operate your business, and for getting insight from some of the most successful and influential entrepreneurs to ever walk on this earth.
Read these quotes carefully and think about what you can learn from them in the way you run your business but also how you should change your mindset for success.
Contents
Best quotes about entrepreneurship
1. “Only the paranoid survive.”
-Andy Grove
2. “You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.”
-Jessica Herrin
3. “Success depends on employees. For me knowing and connecting with my employees is very important.”
-Divine Ndhlukula
4. “Don’t let others convince you that the idea is good when your gut tells you it’s bad.”
-Kevin Rose
5. “Don’t get distracted. Never tell yourself that you need to be the biggest brand in the whole world. Start by working on what you need at the present moment and then what you need to do tomorrow. So, set yourself manageable targets.”
-Jas Bagniewski
6. “If you can offer a free tier that provides a lot of value, it will naturally help your product to spread much more rapidly.”
-Melanie Perkins
7. “In the age of transparency, honesty, and generosity, even in the form of an apology, generate goodwill.”
-Alexander Asseily
8. “If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.”
-Brian Chesky
9. “One of the greatest skills of leadership is being unflappable. Anytime you do anything in the world; there’s going to be criticism.”
-Arianna Huffington
10. “When you are building a startup, it’s difficult. Particularly, a startup that is expanding at the rate of Tinder. You have to give 100%, and you have to be committed. Solving the problem has to be personal or else you’re going to disintegrate.”
-Sean Rad
11. “Selling is not a pushy, winner-takes-all, macho act. It is an empathy-led, process-driven, and knowledge-intensive discipline. Because, in the end, people buy from people.”
-Subroto Bagchi
12. “Ignore the hype of the startups that you see in the press. Mostly, it’s a pack of lies. Half of these startups will be dead in a year. So, focus on building your business so you can be the one left standing.”
-Jules Pieri
13. “It’s important to realize that brand is much more than a logo and slogan. A brand is who your company is: how you function and make decisions.”
-Joanna McFarland
14. “Do not focus on numbers. Focus on doing what you do best. It’s about building a community who want to visit your site every day because you create value and offer expertise.”
-Cassey Ho
15. “When in doubt, bootstrap. Using your own personal resources is the easiest way to start a business. You don’t have to convince investors about the merits of your idea. You just have to convince yourself.”
-Ryan Holmes
16. “Starting a company extracts so much energy and conviction that not having a clear-cut goal and meaningful mission can hamper your success. This is why, at Virta, our mission was clearly defined: reverse early type-2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025.”
-Sami Inkinen
17. “If you know too much before the start, then you will get overwhelmed. Come up with an original idea, and don’t copy because there will be no passion. You need that otherworldly passion. Just start.”
-Jeni Britton Bauer
18. “Don’t assume that borrowing lots of money can make your startup fly. There are many things to the business other than investors, and it’s possible to succeed with your startup without breaking the bank.”
-Barnaby Lashbrooke
19. “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
20. “It’s necessary to find a mentor who can invest time to know your personal capabilities and business model.”
-Nigel Davies
21. “You have to get good at ceding control and not taking things personally. Even seasoned entrepreneurs have struggled with that. I think it’s about not taking failures personally and also not taking successes personally.”
-Leila Janah
22. “No matter how many customers you have, each is an individual. The day you start thinking of them as this amorphous ‘collection’ and stop thinking of them as people is the day you start going out of business.”
-Dharmesh Shah
23. “If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.”
-Peter Omidyar
24. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”
-Jack Dorsey
25. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.”
-Guy Kawasaki
26. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.”
-Bill Gates
27. “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
– Caterina Fake
28. “It is always the start that requires the greatest effort.”
-James Cash Penney
29. “If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.”
-Claude McDonald
30. “Have the end in mind and every day make sure you’re working towards it.”
-Ryan Allis
31. “When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.”
-Robert Kiyosaki
32. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
-Napoleon Hill
33. “If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.”
-Brian Tracy
34. “The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
35. “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.”
-James F. Byrnes
36. “Your ability to attract, evaluate, and forge strong working relationships with co-founders, early employees, and investors often mean the difference between failure and success.”
-Clara Shih
37. “Fundraising is much easier now because of crowdfunding. Take advantage of that.”
-Constantin Bisanz
38. “Being a woman in business doesn’t come without challenges. My advice? Surround yourself with other supportive women that encourage you, share ideas, and get you motivated.”
-Jessica Alba
39. “My advice is to focus on the importance of forging a long-term relationship, whether with colleagues, partners, or customers. It is often easy to get caught up in short-term decisions.”
-Sheila Lirio Marcelo
40. “If you’re starting something on your own, you better have a passion for it, because this is hard work.”
-Sallie Krawcheck
41. “Be nicer to your customers than your competitors.”
-Richard Reed
42. “Passion, creativity, and resilience are the most crucial skills in business. If you’ve got those, you’re ready to embark on the journey.”
-Jo Malone
43. “If you are working on a product that’s going to be consumer-facing, then feedback is invaluable. You should be out there being brave and talking to people and asking for feedback as much as possible.”
-Emily Brooke
44. “Sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to ask. I have been in the news many times just by calling on the news channel and asking them about featuring my business.”
-Lori Cheek
45. “Remain self-funded as long as possible.”
-Garrett Camp
46. “Start as small as you can. When I started SkinnyMe Tea, I had $24 in the bank, and I was entirely self-funded. If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product; you’ve launched too late.”
-Gretta Rose van Riel
47. “As a founder, lay all the possible scenarios — from best to worst — in front of you, so you don’t get surprised when something happens.”
-Brian Wong
48. “We learned many things while building FourSquare. One of the most important lessons is to be clear to investors about what the company will and will not do. And be open about the priorities of the things that have to be done.”
-Dennis Crowley
49. “I can name dozens of failures that we had over the years. Yet, with all these failures, we still managed to build Appster into one of the largest, and best companies in our industry. So, remember every time you fail, remind yourself these words: ‘Life won’t always go my way, but I will always find a way’.”
-Josiah Humphrey
50. “If you tune it so that you have zero chance of failure, you usually also have zero chance of success. The key is to look at ways for when you get to your failure checkpoint, you know to stop.”
-Reid Hoffman
60. “Some days you’re smiling and thinking you’re going to make this thing rock. Then the next day a pipe breaks and your costs look too high. You have to learn to keep your eyes on an ultimate goal. If you lose sight of that goal, you have to get out.”
-Hamdi Ulukaya
61. “If something is important enough, or you believe something is important enough, even if you are scared, you will keep going.”
-Elon Musk
62. “One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language.”
-Pierre Omidyar
63. “If you start thinking you are good at something, that’s often the day you stop trying to be better and open the back door for someone to come after you. That’s why we always aim higher. We never feel like we’re done.”
–Drew Houston
64. “Most of us want to tell our coworkers or friends, or husbands or wives, our ideas. For what reason? We want validation. But I feel ideas are most vulnerable in their infancy. Out of love and concern, friends and family give all the reasons or objections on why [you] shouldn’t do it. I didn’t want to risk that.”
-Sara Blakely
65. “I’m always tweaking, always trying to make it better, constantly moving the levers and dials.”
-Steve Ells
66. “It starts with not having a hangover with the way things used to be.”
-Kevin Plank
67. “There is something artificial when everyone is agreeing with each other. It’s useful to indulge people who don’t agree, and see their viewpoint or force yourself to explain things better.”
-David Sack
68. “If you are not getting traction on your idea, you try few things. You try pushing harder, cleaning up something, building up to something aggressively — but if it doesn’t get traction, then don’t bother.”
-Vijay Sharma
69. “It’s very important for entrepreneurs to look for people in the company who are not afraid of failures, for example, intrapreneurs. They make a business more successful by thinking like an entrepreneur — but within a company.”
-Chirag Kulkarni
70. “If we are going to be part of the solution, we have to engage the problems.”
-Majora Carte
71. “[Don’t] let anyone convince you that your dream, your vision to be an entrepreneur, is something that you shouldn’t do. What often happens is that people who are well meaning, who really care for us, are afraid for us and talk us out of it.”
-Cathy Hughes
72. “Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family and business with expiration dates, and I update them every six months.”
-Daymond John
73. “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.”
-Madam C.J. Walker
74. “There is only one success- to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
– Christopher Morley
75. “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
– Napoleon Hill
76. “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
77. “What is not started will never get finished”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
78. “When you cease to dream you cease to live.”
– Malcolm Forbes
79. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
– Jim Rohn
80. “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake- you can’t learn anything from being perfect.”
– Adam Osborne
81. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
-Walt Disney
82. “Our chief want in life, is someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him, we are easily great.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
83. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
-Robert H. Schuller
84. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
– John C. Maxwell
85. “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
– Ralph Nader
86. “Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
– Confucius
87. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
– Bill Gates
88. “Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow.”
-Oprah Winfrey
89. “There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.”
-Mandy Hale
90. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker
91. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
– Vince Lombardi
91. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs
92. “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had — everyday I’m learning something new.”
– Richard Branson
93. “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
– Oprah Winfrey
94. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
– Bill Gates
95. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with dust and sweat; who strives valiantly, who errs and may fall again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
96. “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
97. “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
-Steve Martin
98. “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
99. “An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.”
-Roy Ash
100. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison
101. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
– Albert Einstein
102. “We all have things we must do that we don’t really care to do and things we must do that we don’t mind doing, then there’s the goofing off.”
-Mi Oon
103. “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”
– Donald Trump
104. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
105. ”Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”
– Thomas Edison
106. “Dear entrepreneurs, you can start a thousand businesses, launch 100 projects, and take dozens of companies public, but you only have one shot at being part of your kid’s childhood. Your kid doesn’t care about your platform, they care about your presence.”
-Jon Acuff
107. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain
108. “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
-John A. Shedd
109. “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
110. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”
– Napoleon Hill
111. “Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.”
-Jeff Bezos
112. “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
– Bill Cosby
113. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.”
-Drew Houston
114. “Success is not what you have, but who you are.”
– Bo Bennet
115. “In carrying out e-commerce, the most important thing is to keep doing what you are doing right now with passion, to keep it up.”
– Jack Ma
116. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
-Warren Buffett
117. “Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.”
– Mark Cuban
118. “A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.”
-Henry Kravis
119. “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.”
– Ryan Freitas
120. “Successful entrepreneurs are givers and not takers of positive energy.”
121. “Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.”
-Mary Kay Ash
122. “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
-Francis Chan
123. “Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.”
– Tony Hsieh
124. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
– George Lorimer
125. “Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”
– Booker T. Washington
126. “We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.”
– Pete Cashmore
127. “How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”
-Yvon Chouinard
128. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
-Henry Ford
129. “It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.”
– Jason Cohen
130. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.
– Josh James
131. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”
– Scott Belsky
132. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.”
– Seth Godin
133. “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.”
– Tom Preston-werner
134. “The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.”
– Reid Hoffman
135. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.”
– Steve Case
136. “Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.”
– Arianna Huffington
137. “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.”
– Howard Schultz
138. “High expectations are the key to everything.”
– Sam Walton
139. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.”
– Michael Bloomberg
140. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
– Steve Jobs
141. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”
– Corneille
142. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
– Mark Twain
143. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
-Albert Einstein
144. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
-Walt Disney
145. “Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.”
-Tony Hsieh
146. “You have to believe it before you see it.”
– Jeremiah Say
147. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
148. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
-Confucius
149. “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
150. “If you don’t have big dreams and goals, you’ll end up working for someone that does.
151. “Knowledge without action is meaningless.”
– Abu Bakr
152. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it.”
153. “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”
– Marian Wright Edelman
154. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
– Albert Einstein
155. “Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not.”
– George Bernard Shaw
156. “Speak less than you know; have more than you show.”
– William Shakespeare
157. “Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.”
– Noah Everett
158. “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.”
– Anthony Volodkin
159. “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 cant.”
– Warren G. Tracy’s Student
160. “Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.”
– Tony Hsieh
161. “Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.”
– Chris Dixon
162. “Always deliver more than expected.”
– Larry Page
163. “The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says ‘Go!’ – a leader says, ‘Let’s go!’
– E.M Kelly
164. “Every noble work is at first impossible.”
– Thomas Carlyle
165. “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
