Every once in a while, there comes a day when you wake up in the morning without the slightest bit of motivation to go to work. You may feel physically and mentally depleted so that you have to forcefully drag yourself out of bed. Even worse, it doesn’t get better during the workday. You may be confronted with unpleasant tasks, boring routines or aggressive deadlines that take away all the joy at work. Whenever you’re confronted with a lack of motivation to work, it can be exceptionally helpful to have a collection of motivational quotes at hand that helps you to reignite your passion for your profession. These motivational quotes for work will help you to get through the workday. Enjoy! (You may also like our article on How to Get Motivated).
The big issue about not being motivated to work lies in the fact that your motivation, productivity, energy level, and your overall happiness are tightly connected with each other. For instance, scientific studies on work motivation have highlighted that your happiness impacts work productivity. If you are not motivated, you’re less likely to be happy about your job and your overall productivity will suffer accordingly. Even worse, your motivation to work may decrease even further because of this, making it a dangerous cycle that’s difficult to get out of.
“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
While we all are occasionally confronted with bad days, the pinnacle of success lies in your ability to consistently motivate yourself. If you are able to keep your inner desire to greatness and the drive for big accomplishments at a high level, success in the workplace is a likely outcome.
These are the motivational work quotes that help you to reignite your passion for greatness
In order to turn things around, it’s important to simply get started – even though getting motivated for work may seem like a Herculean challenge at the beginning. But if you are able to make some initial progress by taking one step after the other, you will notice how it builds momentum. To keep improving your motivation, it’s important to have some tools at hand that help you to quickly get motivated. That’s where motivational quotes for work come in handy.
Motivational Quotes for Work to Get You through the Day
The following quotes are the thoughts of successful businessmen, authors, scientists, and explorers. These individuals were confronted with the very same challenge of maintaining a high level of motivation we all are facing. As such, they have found unique and creative ways to stay motivated throughout their exceptional careers. As a bonus, we have also collected some funny motivational quotes for work.
Here are the most motivational quotes for work:
1.
“Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
Kevin Durant
2.
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?”
Lance Armstrong
3.
“The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. work is the key to success, and hard work can help you accomplish anything.”
Vince Lombardi
4.
“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
5.
“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
6.
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Nelson Mandela
7.
“There’s no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all equals as human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that’s that. I am not talented. I am obsessed.”
Conor McGregor
8.
“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
9.
“At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, no regrets.”
Steve Maraboli
10.
“No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
11.
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
George Bernard Shaw
12.
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”
Francois Auguste De Chateaubriand
13.
“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. „
William James
14.
“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
15.
“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Mark Twain
16.
“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”
Henry Ford
17.
“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.”
Samuel Lover
18.
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained in sudden flight but, they while their companions slept, they were toiling upwards in the night.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
19.
“Never give up. It’s like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can’t do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don’t ever, ever, ever give up.”
Richelle E. Goodrich
20.
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
Zig Ziglar
21.
“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
22.
“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”
Vince Lombardi
23.
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
Randy Pausch
24.
“Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
Steve Martin
25.
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
Thomas Jefferson
26.
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
Aristotle
27.
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”
Stephen Hawking
28.
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”
Newt Gingrich
29.
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti
30.
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
Jim Rohn
31.
“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
Tchaikovsky
32.
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
Beverly Sills
33.
“Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”
Patrick Süskind
34.
“Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.”
Seth Godin
35.
“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.”
Elisabeth Elliot
36.
“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”
Julius Irving
37.
“A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.”
Charles de Gaulle
38.
“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”
John Quincy Adams
39.
“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it”
Buddha
40.
“I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.”
Louis L’Amour
41.
“Look to your right… It is the path back home. If you choose, you can take it. It is safe, easy, and comfortable. You do not have to work out or fight or do anything else you do not want to… Or you can keep moving forward. I will not lie to you. I cannot predict what may become of you. It will require a lot of training, hard work, study, and danger. But in the very end, you will know strength. I swear it. You might just become someone who will make a difference in the world.”
Wesley Chu
42.
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
Ovid
43.
“There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you’re doing well.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
44.
“The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
C.S. Lewis
45.
“To achieve what 1% of the world’s population has [financial freedom], you must be willing to do what only 1% dare to do..hard work and perseverance of highest order.”
Manoj Arora
46.
“There are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake.”
John D. MacDonald
47.
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill
48.
“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”
Isaac Asimov
49.
“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
50.
“When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.”
Robert Rodriguez
51.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Samuel Goldwyn
52.
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
Thomas A. Edison
53.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas A. Edison
54.
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
Francis Bacon
55.
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.”
Malcolm Gladwell
56.
“Even though your time on the job is temporary, if you do a good enough job, your work there will last forever.”
Idowu Koyenikan
57.
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
Arthur C. Clarke
58.
“Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what “little” acts have done for our world.”
Steve Maraboli
59.
“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
Theodor Roosevelt
60.
“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”
Émile Zola
61.
“Hide not your talents, they for use were made, what’s a sundial in the shade?”
Benjamin Franklin
62.
“I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work–the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – or 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
63.
“Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.”
Roy T. Bennett
64.
“The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.”
Stephen Richards
65.
“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
66.
“Work is when you confront the problems you might otherwise be tempted to run away from”
Rolf Potts
67.
“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”
Steve Maraboli
68.
“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
69.
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”
Anthony Robbins
70.
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”
Jimmy Johnson
71.
“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”
Gustave Flaubert
72.
“Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.”
Madeleine L’Engle
73.
“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.”
Tim Fargo
74.
“Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn’t what you get for it, but what you become for it.”
Steve Maraboli
75.
“If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”
Malcolm Gladwell
76.
“The best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Theodore Roosevelt
77.
“That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.”
Charles Bukowski
78.
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Confucius
79.
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
Dale Carnegie
80.
“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”
Winston S. Churchill
81.
“Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.”
John Burroughs
82.
“It doesn’t matter how great your shoes are if you don’t accomplish anything in them.”
Martina Boone
83.
“In my experience, nothing worthwhile has ever really been all that easy. But it certainly has been worthwhile regardless how difficult it seemed. „
Robert Fanney
84.
“You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want.”
Pablo
85.
“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade.”
Rudyard Kipling
86.
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius
87.
“Sometimes there’s not a better way. Sometimes there’s only the hard way.”
Mary E. Pearson
88.
“A change of work is the best rest.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
89.
“Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.”
Marian Wright Edelman
90.
“If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there’s no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.”
Joyce Chapman
91.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou
92.
“I’m really very self-confident when it comes to my work. When I take on a project, I believe in it 100%. I really put my soul into it. I’d die for it. That’s how I am.”
Michael Jackson
93.
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
94.
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Winston Churchill
95.
“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present – I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?”
Marcus Aurelius
96.
“Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible”
Cherie Carter-Scott
97.
“Whatever you make, base it upon that which is most important to you. Only then will it have depth and meaning, and only then will it resonate with others.”
Christopher Paolini
98.
“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
H.G. Wells
99.
“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
100.
“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
Ludwig von Mises
101.
“If you invest nothing, the reward is worth little.”
Richelle E. Goodrich
102.
“I’ve always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
103.
“He who moves not forward, goes backward.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
104.
“When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes, and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve.”
Roy Bennett
105.
“The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.”
Criss Jami
106.
“Do not sit still; start moving now. In the beginning, you may not go in the direction you want, but as long as you are moving, you are creating alternatives and possibilities.”
Rodolfo Costa
107.
“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Gustave Flaubert
108.
“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman, but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.”
Louis Nizer
109.
“The humblest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them.”
Louisa May Alcott
110.
“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Roy T. Bennett
111.
“Understanding comes hard to persons who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.”
Kenzaburō Ōe
112.
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils – weariness, vice, and want.”
Voltaire
113.
“If you hang out with chickens, you’re going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles, you’re going to fly.”
Steve Maraboli
114.
“If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.”
Abraham Lincoln
115.
“There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.”
Andrew Jackson
Funny motivational quotes for work
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
Jerome K. Jerome
“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
Robert Heinlein
“When I’m at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be ‘how do I get out of this hole?’ In reality, the main question might be ‘how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it?”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Douglas Adams
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
Charles Lamb
“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
“Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.”
Charles J. Sykes
“I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.”
David Sedaris
I hope you enjoyed this collection of motivational work quotes.
Stay victorious!
