The Greatest Inspirational Career Quotes of All Time

Quotes and saying by the famous and influential are one of the best places to find career advice, especially if you want to be successful in life.

These inspiring speeches can send chills down your spine.

Here we’ve compiled the greatest career quotes that will prove to be life-changing.

Let’s discover the greatest career quotes of all time!

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1. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 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

2. “A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.” – Max Lucado

3. “A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.”  – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

4. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James

5. “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” – Mark Twain

6. “Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

7. “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch

8. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

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

10. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” –  Confucius

11. “Communicate in a respectful manner – don’t just tell your team members what you want, but explain to them why.” – Jeffrey Morales

12. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell

13. “Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire.” – Johnny Carson

14. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie

15. “Developing a good work ethic is key. Apply yourself at whatever you do, whether you’re a janitor or taking your first summer job because that work ethic will be reflected in everything you do in life.” – Tyler Perry

16. “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

17. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” – Dale Carnegie

18. “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.” – William Patten

19. “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill

20. “Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.” – Hillary Clinton

21. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

22. “Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.” – George Lucas

23. “Even though your time on the job is temporary, if you do a good enough job, your work there will last forever.” – Idowu Koyenikan

24. “Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” – Robert H. Schuller

25. “Feeling confident is necessary to reach for opportunities. It’s a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they’re seized.” – Sheryl Sandberg

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26. “Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.” – Katherine Whitehorn

27. “Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘we.” – Phil Jackson

28. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

29. “Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.” – Joseph Barbara

30. “Hiring well is also part of the equation. Look for people who are positive in nature, hard-working, and will add to your team. When problem employees cause trouble, deal with it quickly. Life’s too short to work with jerks.” – Jill Geilser

31. “I believe that working with good people matters because then the work environment is good. If there is a sense of respect and belief among the people you work with, that is when good work is done.” – Ranbir Kapoor

32. “I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.” – Helen Keller

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

34. “I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.” – Lou Holtz

35. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” – Elon Musk

36. “I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything.” – Jon Stewart

37. “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

38. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” –  Henry Ford

39. “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.” – Abraham Lincoln

40. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin

41. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

42. “If you can DREAM it, you can DO it.” – Walt Disney

43. “If you’re interested in ‘balancing’ work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead, make your work more pleasurable.” – Donald Trump

44. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” – Sheryl Sandberg

45. “If you’re waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you’ll never make it.” – Criss Jami

46. “In every success story, you will find someone who has made a courageous decision.” – Peter F. Drucker

47. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

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

49. “It is never too late to change your career.” – Anonymous

50. “It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” Bruce Lee

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51. “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

52. “It’s not what you achieve, it’s what you overcome. That’s what defines your career.” – Carlton Fisk

53. “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

54. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

55. “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter F. Drucker

56. “My best advice to entrepreneurs is this: Forget about making mistakes, just do it.” – Ajaero Tony Martins

57. “Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.” – Dianne Feinstein

58. “No one can discover you until you do. Exploit your talents, skills, and strengths and make the world sit up and take notice.” – Rob Liano

59. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!'” – Audrey Hepburn

60. “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.” – Walt Disney

61. “One of the most important things for any leader is never letting anyone else define who you are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.” – Ginni Rometty

62. “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” – Chris Grosser

63. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison

64. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

65. “People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” – Mary Kay Ash

66. “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” – Dale Carnegie

67. “Plenty of men can do good work for a spurt and with an immediate promotion in mind, but for promotion, you want a man in whom good work has become a habit.” – Henry L. Doherty

68. “Professionalism is knowing how to do it, when to do it, and doing it.” – Frank Tyger

69. Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins

70. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

71. “Success doesn’t come to you. You go to it.” – Marva Collins

72. “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” – General George Patton

73. “Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don’t let these feelings stop them.” – T. Harv Eker

74. “Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.” – Patrick Suskind

75. “The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra

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76. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln

77. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

78. “The future depends on what you do today.” – Mahatma Gandhi

79. “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan

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

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

82. “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” – Peter F. Drucker

83. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

84. “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

85. “The professionals must set a good example.” A. Bartlett Giamatti

86. “The secret is keeping busy and loving what you do.” – Lionel Hampton

87. “The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.” – William Jennings Bryan

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

89. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown

90. “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

91. “Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy.” – Paulo Coelho

92. “Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

93. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem

94. “Work to become, not to acquire.” – Elbert Hubbard

95. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

96. “You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” – Winston Churchill

97. “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Confucius

98. “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” – Henry Ford

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

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

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