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Motivational Quotes For Work

Motivational quotes for work come in handy when you are feeling uninspired or encountering a challenging stretch.

You work hard to achieve your goals, but sometimes the pressure can be overwhelming. These uplifting and inspiring words help you to stay on track and keep going when things get tough.

Best Motivational Quotes for Work

Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.
Vaibhav Shah

I don’t like work–no man does–but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not, for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show and never can tell what it really means.
Joseph Conrad

Motivational quotes for work.

All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.
Michael John Bobak

Don’t count the days, make the days count.
Muhammad Ali

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
Pablo Picasso

If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!
T. Harv Eker

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
Émile Zola

Inspiring Work Quotes

When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it; it simply means I can’t do it with them.
Karen E. Quinones Miller

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
Coco Chanel

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
Barack Obama

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Kurt Vonnegut

Do not whine. Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone
Joan Didion

Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them.
Unknown

Good Motivational Quotes for Work

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing–that’s why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Martin Luther King Jr.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs

I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.
Oprah Winfrey

You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing.
Philippos

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
Frederick Douglass

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
Bill Gates

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.
John Wooden

Short Motivational Quotes for Work

Opportunities don’t happen; you create them.
Chris Grosser

Light tomorrow with today.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Work without love is slavery.
Mother Teresa

You should not confuse your career with your life.
Dave Barry

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
Dale Carnegie

Make each day your masterpiece.
John Wooden

Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.
Buddha

Our labour preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and want.
Voltaire

Don’t mistake activity with achievement.
John Wooden

Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.
Farrah Gray

Fall 7 times, stand up 8.
Japanese Proverb

Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
Leonardo da Vinci

Someday is not a day of the week.
Janet Dailey

A year from now, you may wish you had started today.
Karen Lamb

All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney — See 100 Best Walt Disney Sayings.

Funny Motivational Quotes for Work

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.
Charles Lamb

If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.
Terry Pratchett

We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

I’ve come to the conclusion that people who wear headphones while they walk, are much happier, more confident, and more beautiful individuals than someone making the solitary drudge to work without acknowledging their own interests and power.
Jason Mraz

See Brené Brown Quotes.

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
J.M. Barrie

Apparently, I lack some particular perversion which today’s employer is seeking.
John Kennedy Toole

I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Jerome K. Jerome

Amusing Insights

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
Emile Zola

We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.
Leslie Knope

A person who has not done one half of his day’s work by ten o’clock runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.
Emily Bronte

Inspirational Motivational Quotations

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life–think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
Swami Vivekananda

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Plato

Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don’t just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won’t happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you’ll love it up here.
Donald Trump

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Thomas J. Watson

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.
Amelia Earhart

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
Alan Turing

The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Napoleon Hill

We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.
Earl Nightingale

Dreams mean work.
Paulo Coelho

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Daily Motivational Quotes for Work

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Aristotle

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson

All happiness depends on courage and work.
Honoré de Balzac

The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.
Richard Bach

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Tony Robbins

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.
Robert Collier

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou

Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.
Gordon B. Hinckley

If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.
Jim Henson

Galvanizing Quotes

You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
George Lorimer

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.
Louisa May Alcott

Successful entrepreneurs are givers and not takers of positive energy.
Unknown

Masanobu Fukuoka Quotation

I do not particularly like the word’ work.’ Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive.

The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time.

I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life.

For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.
Masanobu Fukuoka

Motivational Quotes for Working Hard

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas A. Edison

Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face.
Manoj Arora

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

No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
Vidal Sassoon

Hide not your talents, they for use were made, What’s a sundial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
Jimmy Johnson

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
William James

Working Hard For Success Quotes

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.
Tricia Cunningham

Spending time with God is the key to our strength and success in all areas of life. Be sure that you never try to work God into your schedule, but always work your schedule around Him.
Joyce Meyer

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

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
Bruce Lee

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

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Bruce Feirstein

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

If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents–start charging for it.
Kim Garst

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Powerful Motivational Quotes for Work

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.
Albert Einstein

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.
Phil Jackson

These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.
Anthony de Mello

In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.
Tina Fey

There is no traffic jam along the extra mile.
Roger Staubach

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert

Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man’s true worth.
Criss Jami

When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.
Lolly Daskal

I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing.
Martha Stewart

The more your money works for you, the less you have to work for money.
Idowu Koyenikan

When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.
Theodore Roosevelt

Relatable Motivational Quotes for Work

The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
George Carlin

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Alain de Botton

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.
Dave Barry

When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.
Dr. Seuss

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.
Idowu Koyenikan

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.
Colin R. Davis

Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.
Anne Frank

I don’t really like coffee, she said, but I don’t really like it when my head hits my desk when I fall asleep either.
Brian Andreas

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.
Victor Hugo

Deep Motivational Quotes for work

These motivational quotes for work come from an intellectual perspective.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.
Proverb

Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you’ve heard of the concept. It’s called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanese game shows, only without all the glory.
Jim Butcher

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.
Harry S. Truman

Compelling Quotations on Work

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish. You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
Simone de Beauvoir

We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.
Marshall McLuhan

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got.
Unknown

Motivational Quotes for Work Creativity

If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.
Jim Rohn

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.
Les Brown

We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.
Ariana Huffington

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.

Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
Chuck Close

Working Hard Quotations

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.
Madeleine L’Engle

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.
Mark Caine

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
Steven Pressfield

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
Jim Rohn

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
Peter Drucker

Motivational Captions for Work

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

If you worked hard, then everything will be fine.

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

All great things in life are hard to achieve, and if you shy away from hard work and challenges, you’ll miss out.

Overworking is the Black Plague of the 21st Century.

They told me I’d never get that far. They were right; I got even further.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

Barking hard work, being a boy.

Instagram Captions

Hard things are put in our way, not to stop us, but to call out our courage and strength.

Sometimes there’s no better way. Sometimes, there’s only the hard way.

Everything you need is already inside you; get started.

All good work requires self-revelation.

Your problem isn’t the problem. Your reaction is the problem.

Even a low class warrior can surpass an elite, with enough hard work.

Hard work is the best talent that I know, strangely, it works in all the fields of human endeavor.

If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission.

Genius is 10% talent and 90% hard work.

You can do anything, but not everything.

Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work.

No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder.

Inspiration works if you work.

The sweet smell of success comes on the back of the stench of hard-earned sweat.

Hard Work; Not Hardly Working

Do all the work you can while there is the grace of strength.

Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Many a man wants glory but fails to work.

Every failure makes me work twice as hard as me giving up.

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.

When you truly love what you do, not working is hard work.

Hard work isn’t a punishment; it’s a gift.

Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.

The wise rest at least as hard as they work.

Hard work is even more pleasing to the rich, whereas laziness is even more disgusting to the poor.

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.

No seasons of life don’t require hard work and determination to accomplish something great.

I’m a greater believer in luck, and the harder I work, the more I have of it.

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?

Do one thing every day that scares you.

By Michael O’Halloran

About Michael O'Halloran

Michael O’Halloran founded Greeting Card Poet in 2014 and has worked as its publisher and editor ever since. He has co-authored four books on kids’ trivia and four on coaching. Previously, Michael was the president of Magnetic Poetry. He has invented and brought over 75 new gift and toy products to market, most of which deal with wordplay. Mike is married and a father of four daughters.

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