I’m a late bloomer when it comes to business. I admittedly had no interest in the topic until I was about 22 years old. Before that, I just saw it as something that dudes in suits studying finance degrees talked about while drinking Johhny Walker Blue.
But after I finally moved away from Canada and changed up my life, a few encounters with other innovative expats set me on a new path. They showed me that entrepreneurship could be be whatever you wanted it to be. Your business could just you on laptop working solo, a public company with shareholders, or anything in between.
I’ve come to realize that entrepreneurial success requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and resilience (plus some timing and luck). But if you’re up for the challenge, it can be one of the most rewarding paths you’ll ever take.
I’ve rounded up some of my favorite quotes for entrepreneurs from some of history’s most innovative minds.
May they help motivate and encourage you on your own entrepreneurial journey.
Quotes For Entrepreneurs
The stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.
Tim Ferriss
Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.
Ben Silbermann
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.
Socrates
Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.
Anthony Volodkin
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.
Dave Thomas
If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.
Jeff Bezos
If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.
Zig Ziglar
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Reid Hoffman
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
Thomas Edison
Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.
Jack Dorsey
Always deliver more than expected.
Larry Page
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. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Steve Jobs
Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.
Mark Cuban
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates
If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.
Mark Zuckerberg
When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.
Josh James
It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.
Scott Belsky
Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.
Golda Meir
Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.
Tony Hsieh
The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.
Reid Hoffman
The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.
Ingvar Kamprad
Nothing works better than just improving your product.
Joel Spolsky
Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.
Mark Pincus
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
Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.
Chris Dixon
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller
Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.
Paul Rand
Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.
Jeffrey Zeldman
The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.
Rob Kalin
If you’re interested in the living heart of what you do, focus on building things rather than talking about them.
Ryan Freitas
Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch.
Michael Arrington
Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.
Wayne Huizenga
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
Guy Kawasaki
An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.
David Karp
Get a mentor in the applicable field if you’re at all unsure of what you’re looking for.
Kyle Bragger
All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.
Reid Hoffman
Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.
Joel Spolsky
Anything that is measured and watched, improves.
Bob Parsons
Stay self-funded as long as possible.
Garrett Camp
Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.
Tony Hsieh
Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.
Biz Stone
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another. And, when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.
Daniel Pink
Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the upmarket.
Jason Calacanis
It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.
Jason Cohen
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
You can’t make anything viral, but you can make something good.
Peter Shankman
Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.
Noah Everett
Data beats emotions.
Sean Rad
I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.
Estee Lauder
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 don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.
Larry Page
Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.
Michael Dell
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.
Henry Ford
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Bill Gates
In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.
Steve Case
Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.
Oprah Winfrey
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
Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.
Tony Hsieh
Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.
Sara Blakely
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin
A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.
Fred Wilson
Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.
Howard Schultz
Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
Charles R. Swindoll
If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
Stephen Hawking
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
Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.
Les Brown
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
Oprah Winfrey
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.
Steve Jobs
You Are Never Too Old To Set Another Goal Or To Dream A New Dream.
C.S. Lewis
Live each day as if your life had just begun.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Lean forward into your life. Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
Mary Anne Radmacher
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou
Do not let the memories of your past limit the potential of your future. There are no limits to what you can achieve on your journey through life, except in your mind.
Roy T. Bennett
You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.
Oprah Winfrey
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.
Sir Claus Moser
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
Michael Jordan
The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.
Colin R. Davis
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.
Thomas J. Watson
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
Today’s Accomplishments Were Yesterday’s Impossibilities.
Robert H. Schuller
Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier
Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.
Jim Rohn
The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.
Seth Godin
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
William Feather
Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.
Tony Hsieh
I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.
Bill Gates
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G. K. Chesterton
Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
Conrad Hilton
If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run, then walk. And, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.
Martin Luther King Jr
I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or, are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance?
Jill Konrath
The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
Barack Obama
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas Edison
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill
You have to believe in yourself when no one else does — that makes you a winner right there.
Venus Williams
Strength shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Let me tell you the secret that has led to my goal. My strength lies solely on my tenacity.
Louis Pasteur
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
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
Earl Nightingale
You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.
Chuck Yeager
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
Bill Gates
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
Paulo Coelho
A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
Colin Powell
There is simply no substitute for hard work when it comes to achieving success.
Heather Bresch
Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.
Pele
No great achiever – even those who made it seem easy – ever succeeded without hard work.
Jonathan Sacks
The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
Harry Golden
There is no substitute for hard work.
Thomas Edison
It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
John D. Rockefeller
If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.
Jim Rohn
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
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Failure is success if we learn from it.
Malcolm Forbes
If you can push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen.
Marissa Mayer
Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Michael Jordan
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
Stephen Covey
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.
Paulo Coelho
There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.
Ray Goforth
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
Richard Branson
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
Mark Cuban
Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.
Drew Houston
Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.
Jack Canfield
Life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
Henry Ford
Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.
J.K. Rowling
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty—six times I’ve been trusted to take the game—winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar
What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realise I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.
Will Rogers
I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
Benjamin Franklin
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Edison
Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
Alan Turing
There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.
Stephen Hawking
The accident is your training. Life is a choice. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you’d like to be.
Socrates
No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
John Keating
You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
Eames
Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter.
John Nash
If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
Steve Jobs
Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. H.
Jackson Brown Jr.
The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.
Richard Bach
Don’t count the days, make the days count.
Muhammad Ali
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Aristotle
A year from now you may wish you had started today.
Karen Lamb
Someday is not a day of the week.
Janet Dailey
Parting Words
As far as I’m concerned, if you can find a way to align your business with your passions, use your creativity to make a positive inmpact, and ultimately build a business that supports your ideal lifestyle, you’re winning.
It’s a long road, but there’s joy to be found in the process.
Have any other quotes for entrepreneurs you’d add to the list? Let me know in the comments.
P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Taking Risks
- Quotes About Financial Freedom
- Quotes From Nassim Taleb
- Quotes About Quitting Your Job
- Quotes About Imagination
Originally published November 8, 2021. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.
