Starting a business can be very tough. Not just financially – emotionally too. This is why these business quotes are so valuable for entrepreneurs.

What’s inside

  1. Inspirational Business Quotes
  2. Business Motivation Quotes
  3. Business Success Quotes
  4. Positive Business Quotes
  5. Funny Business Quotes
  6. Famous Business Quotes
  7. Business Communication Quotes
  8. Business Relationship Quotes
  9. Business Ethics Quotes
  10. Women in Business Quotes

Inspirational Business Quotes

  • Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
  • Play by the rules, but be ferocious. – Phil Knight
  • Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson
  • Every problem is a gift; without problems we would not grow. – Anthony Robbins
  • You only have to do a few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong. – Warren Buffett
  • Always deliver more than expected. – Larry Page
  • If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large. – Jeff Bezos
  • The value of an idea lies in the use of it. – Thomas Edison
  • Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates
  • It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. – Scott Belsky
  • Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you. – Tony Hsieh
  • Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea. – Mark Pincus
  • The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%. – Rob Kalin
  • Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. – Guy Kawasaki
  • Anything that is measured and watched, improves. – Bob Parsons
  • Data beats emotions. – Sean Rad
  • See things in the present, even if they are in the future. – Larry Ellison
  • Ideas are commodities. Execution of them is not. – Michael Dell
  • Diligence is the mother of good luck. – Benjamin Franklin
  • Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical. – Howard Schultz

Business Motivation Quotes

  • Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them – Madam C.J. Walker
  • If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs. – Dhirubhai Ambani
  • Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. – Shonda Rhimes
  • Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career. – Meg Whitman
  • Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once. – Drew Houston
  • To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. –Thomas Watson
  • Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure. – Napoleon Hill
  • Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large. – Henry Ford
  • My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had; every day I’m learning something new. – Richard Branson
  • 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
  • All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. – Walt Disney
  • Tough times never last, but tough people do. – Robert H. Schuller
  • Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow. – Oprah Winfrey
  • Remember why you started. – Unknown 
  • Be so good they can’t ignore you. – Steve Martin
  • Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.  – Winston S. Churchill
  • Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
  • Opportunities don’t happen. You create them. – Chris Grosser
  • Do one thing every day that scares you. – Unknown 
  • All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. – Michael John Bobak

Business Success Quotes

  • We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want. – Eric Ries
  • To succeed in business you must learn the art of saying no. – Barbara Corcoran
  • Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. – Jim Rohn
  • Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
  • Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
  • If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. – Steve Jobs
  • There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. – Colin Powell
  • Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. – Coco Chanel
  • I never dreamed about success. I worked for it. – Estée Lauder
  • Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow. – Oprah Winfrey
  • Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. – Jim Rohn
  • The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. – Bruce Lee
  • Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit. – Conrad Hilton
  • I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. It is: Try to please everybody. – Herbert Bayard Swope
  • Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen. – Wayne Huizenga
  • Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career. – Meg Whitman
  • The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well. – John D. Rockefeller
  • Before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is about growing others. – Jack Welch

Positive Business Quotes

  • Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day. – Gary Vaynerchuck
  • You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong. – Warren Buffett
  • And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anaïs Nin
  • There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them. – Seth Godin
  • I feel that luck is a preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah Winfrey
  • You have to believe it before you see it. – Unknown
  • Be the change you wish to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi
  • I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas Edison 
  • Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. – Warren Buffett
  • Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  – Steve Jobs
  • We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle
  • Identify your problems but give your power and energy to solutions. – Tony Robbin
  • The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.  – Walt Disney
  •  Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen
  • You reach a point where you don’t work for money. – Walt Disney
  • It is never too late to be what you might have been.  – George Eliot
  • Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners. – Robert T. Kiyosaki
  • Even if you are on the right track, You’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
  •  One finds limits while pushing them – Herbert Simone
  • Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. – John D. Rockefeller

Funny Business Quotes

  • In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later. – Harold Geneen
  • If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good. – Bill Gates
  • A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. – Mark Twain
  • Life is like a dogsled race. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes. – Lewis Grizzard
  • Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  • Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. – Margaret Thatcher
  • There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. – Henry Kissinger
  • I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. – Douglas Adams
  • Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. – George Bernard Shaw
  • The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. –Oscar Wilde
  • Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more. – Oscar Wilde
  • A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost. – Unknown
  • Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it. – Andrew Young
  • Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. – TS Eliot
  • Never invest in anything that eats or needs repairing. – Billy Rose
  • We have paralysis by analysis. – Unknown
  • By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be the boss and work twelve hours a day. – Robert Frost
  • The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. – Lilly Tomlin
  • Bad decisions make good stories. – Ellis Vidler
  • When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye. – Cathy Guisewite

Famous Business Quotes

  • You must be very patient, very persistent. The world isn’t going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea. You’re going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of people. – Herb Kelleher
  • Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility. – Herb Kelleher
  • Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that. – Herb Kelleher
  • If we win the hearts and minds of employees, we’re going to have better business success. – Mary Barra
  • What I always say is, ‘Do every job you’re in like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life, and demonstrate that ownership of it. – Mary Barra
  • 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
  • The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. – Warren Buffett
  • The one thing that I would say defines me is I love to learn. I get excited about new things. I buy more books than I read or finish. – Satya Nadella
  • Longevity in this business is about being able to reinvent yourself or invent the future. – Satya Nadella
  • Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you. – Tony Hsieh
  • Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right. – Reed Hastings
  • Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. – Reed Hastings
  • I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun. – Reed Hastings
  • It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. – Bill Gates
  • The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow. – Bill Gates
  • If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.  – Jeff Bezos
  • Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful. – Jeff Bezos
  • A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well. – Jeff Bezos
  • Business need to go beyond the interest of their companies to the communities they serve. – Ratan Tata

Business Communication Quotes

  • Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller
  • Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  • The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said. – Peter F. Drucker
  • Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  • Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know. – Jim Rohn
  • Communication works for those who work at it. – John Powell
  • The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. – Peter Drucker
  • Communication works for those who work at it. – John Powell
  • The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. – George Bernard Shaw
  • Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader’s success.  He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively. – Unknown
  • Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success. – Paul J. Meyer
  • The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. – Joseph Priestley
  • Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. – Plato
  • First learn the meaning of what you say and then speak. – Epictetus
  • There is only one rule for being a good talker – learn to listen. – Christopher Morley
  • Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening. – Emma Thompson
  • I think for any relationship to be successful, there needs to be loving communication, appreciation, and understanding. – Miranda Kerr
  • We never listen when we are eager to speak. – François de la Rochefoucauld
  • When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective. – Stephen R. Covey
  • The art of communication is the language of leadership. – James Humes

Business Relationship Quotes

  • Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. – Mark Cuban
  • We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. – Jeff Bezos
  • Relationships are the only thing that matters in business and in life. – Jerry Weintraub
  • The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives. – Tony Robbins
  • Assumptions are the termites of relationships. – Henry Winkler
  • Little kindness and courtesies are so important. In relationships, the little things are the big things. – Stephen R. Covey
  • I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. – Woody Allen
  • The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives. – Tony Robbins
  • Treat your business relationships like friendships (or potential friendships).  Formality puts up walls, and walls don’t foster good business relationships.  No one is loyal to a wall… except the one in China. – Steve Pavlina
  • The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. – Joseph Priestley
  • Many relationship problems are rooted in a communication breakdown. These can be as simple as not really hearing what the other person is saying, because we get caught up in our own fixed perspectives. – Sumesh Nair
  • It takes both sides to build a Bridge of better Business relationships. – Fredrik Neil
  • Teamwork is connected independence. – David Cottrell
  • Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. – Mark Cuban
  • Constraints inspire us in how we approach the press, how we approach business relationships, how we do everything. – Jack Dorsey
  • 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
  • Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement. – James Cash Penney
  • The goal is to provide inspiring information that moves people to action. – Guy Kawasaki
  • There is only one boss. The customer. – Sam Walton
  • There are very few people that I deal with from a business side that it’s just strictly a one-sided business relationship. I think that’s important. – David Nail

Business Ethics Quotes

  • Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. – Potter Stewart
  • If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization. –  Robert Noyce
  • Do it from the heart or not at all. – Jeanette Winterson
  • There is no such thing as business ethics. There is only one kind; you have to adhere to the highest standards. – Marvin Bower
  • Being good is good business. – Anita Roddick 
  • World can run without money and currencies but not without business and trade. – Amit Kalantri
  • If your client has a problem with ethics, a signed contract may not be enough to protect you from expensive litigation. – Paul E. Casey
  • The primary aim of business is not to earn profit but to serve people, the customers and society at large, to fulfill their needs! – Dr. Vivencio Ballano
  • Economics without ethics is a caricature. Ethics without economics is a fairy tale. – Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
  • Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules. – Wayne Dyer
  • The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don’t have much wiggle room here. – Seth Godin
  • Business ethics has always had problems that are distinct from those of other professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, dentistry, or nursing. – Peter Singer
  • Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics. – Erik Qualman
  • If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  • Ethics is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feelings. – Valdemar W. Setzer
  • Having George W. Bush giving a lecture on business ethics is like having a leper give you a facial, it just doesn’t work! – Robin Williams
  • Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. – Potter Stewart
  • Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. – Aristotle
  • Honesty and Ethics are the first chapters in the book of wisdom. – Thomas Jefferso
  • Be impeccable with your words and speak with integrity. Say only what you mean and use the power of your words in the direction of truth and love. – Don Miguel Ruiz

Women in Business Quotes

  • Lean in, speak out, have a voice in your organization, and never use the word, ‘sorry’. – Trish Bertuzzi
  • The most successful entrepreneurs I know are optimistic. It’s part of the job description. – Caterina Fake
  • Do one thing every day that scares you. – Eleanor Roosevelt
  • The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. – Coco Chanel
  • I want little girls to grow up knowing they can do anything, even play football. – Jen Welter
  • Life is tough my darling, but so are you. – Stephanie Bennett Henry
  • Whatever it is that you think you want to do, and whatever it is that you think stands between you and that, stop making excuses. You can do anything. – Katia Beauchamp
  • I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist. – Virginia Rometty
  • Know what you bring. Know what you don’t bring. And build a team that covers everything you need. – Angie Hicks
  • The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have. – Padmasree Warrior
  • Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Muriel Strode
  • You are never too small to make a difference. – Greta Thunberg 
  • Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. – Oprah Winfrey
  • Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. – Eleanor Roosevelt 
  • Nothing will work unless you do. – Maya Angelou
  • You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough. – Mae West
  • You never lose in business, either you win or you learn. – Melinda Emerson
  • The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?  – Ayn Rand
  • Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth. – Julie Andrews