115 Inspirational Quotes for Work to Spark Motivation

Do you sometimes struggle to get yourself through the work week? Don’t beat yourself up because of it, we all find ourselves occasionally stuck in a rut. If you’re looking for some quick boost that helps you to get going again, have a look at our list of inspirational quotes for work.

Let’s face it, we all are confronted with those days where absolutely nothing seems to work out. Maybe we’re confronted with tight deadlines or make one unnecessary mistake after another. Whatever the case may be, work simply feels exhausting during times like this. When you have to drag yourself to work, it’s time for a change.

“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.”
Steve Jobs

Off days happen to almost anyone at some point in their career. While sluggish days like this do occur, it’s important to know how you can break yourself free from low-energy states with little to no motivation like this.

These inspirational quotes about work help you to refuel your passion

That’s where our selection of inspirational quotes for work come in quite handy.

115 Inspirational Quotes for Work

Many times, all that is needed to keep pushing ahead is some little spark of inspiration. If your imagination and your hopes are fueled by a motivating vision, going the extra mile and pushing your limits feels natural. To help you boost your excitement for work, we’ve collected the following selection of inspirational statements by remarkable business people and entrepreneurs. These are the quotes that will help you to kick off your desire to reach for greatness.

Enjoy this selection of inspirational quotes for work

1.

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

2.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
Henry Ford

3.

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

4.

“Desire, burning desire, is basic to achieving anything beyond the ordinary.”
Joseph B. Wirthlin

5.

“Do today what others won’t and achieve tomorrow what others can’t.”
Jerry Rice

6.

“Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.”
Gordon B. Hinckley

7.

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”
Pearl Buck

8.

Winners embrace hard work. They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win. Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment. And that’s the difference.”
Lou Holtz

9.

“Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.”
Wilma Rudolph

10.

“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
Vince Lombardi

11.

“If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?”
Joe Namath

12.

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
William Faulkner

13.

“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
Edmund Hillary

14.

Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
Kevin Durant

15.

“Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.”
Og Mandino

16.

“Greatness is sifted through the grind, therefore don’t despise the hard work now for surely it will be worth it in the end.”
Sanjo Jendayi

17.

“Hard work keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.”
Helena Rubinstein

18.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
Jack London

19.

It’s important to know that words don’t move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.”
Danilo Dolci

20.

“Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.”
Mary Kay Ash

21.

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

22.

“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.”
Lance Armstrong

23.

What is the one-sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!”
Larry Page

24.

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

25.

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.”
Jane Austen

26.

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

27.

Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus.”
Helen Hanson

28.

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.”
Jim Rohn

29.

You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.”
Jennifer Freeman

30.

“Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire.”
Bobby Unser

31.

“Big dreams create the magic that stir men’s souls to greatness.”
Bill McCartney

32.

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.”
Rocky Balboa

33.

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

34.

“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.”
Pearl Buck

35.

For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.”
Daniel H. Pink

36.

“I’m bored” is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say “I’m bored.”
Louis C.K

37.

Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.”
Dory

38.

“The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.”
Elbert Hubbard

39.

“The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it’s a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free.”
Charles R. Swindoll

40.

“The question isn’t who is going to let me: it’s who is going to stop me.”
Ayn Rand

41.

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
Babe Ruth

42.

“Push that snooze button and you’ll end up working for someone who didn’t.”
Eric Thomas

43.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.”
Erma Bombeck

44.

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

45.

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

46.

“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
Dr. Robert Schuller

47.

You were born with potential. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.”
Rumi

48.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
Sun Tzu

49.

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

50.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Steve Jobs

51.

Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
Joshua J. Marine

52.

Without labor nothing prospers.”
Sophocles

53.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.”
Vincent van Gogh

54.

“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.”
Russell Warren

55.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
Joseph Campbell

56.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
Stephen King

57.

Don’t be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don’t let others discourage you or tell you that you can’t do it.”
Gertrude B. Elion

58.

It’s not about money or connections – it’s the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone.”
Mark Cuban

59.

“I will go anywhere as long as it is forward.”
David Livingston

60.

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”
Aristotle

61.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”
Salvador Dali

62.

Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along.”
Rae Smith

63.

“The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.”
John Ruskin

64.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
Rumi

65.

“Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.”
Jim Lovell

66.

If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things, you’re excited to get up in the morning.”
Larry Page

67.

“Every job I take, within minutes I’m thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ I think it’s what makes me work. People think I just swagger in and do it. But I doubt myself all the time. It’s what pushes me, what makes me work harder. The older I get, the less I take for granted.”
Ray Winstone

68.

A dream doesn’t become a reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.”
Colin Powell

69.

You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.”
Alan Alda

70.

When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.”
Steve Pavlina

71.

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

72.

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

73.

“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”
Nolan Bushnell

74.

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

75.

The best people want to work the big challenges.”
Larry Page

76.

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

77.

There is only one way to avoid criticism. Do nothing. Be nothing. Say nothing.”
Aristotle

78.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”
Henry David Thoreau

79.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”
Amelia Earhart

80.

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

81.

“I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.”
Ginni Rometty

82.

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

83.

All happiness depends on courage and work.”
Honoré de Balzac

84.

“You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.”
Jessica Herrin

85.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius

86.

“Passion, creativity, and resilience are the most crucial skills in business. If you’ve got those, you’re ready to embark on the journey.”
Jo Malone

87.

“Motivation comes from working on things we care about. It also comes from working with people we care about.”
Sheryl Sandberg

88.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
Paulo Coelho

89.

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.”
Theodore Rubin

90.

“You create opportunities by performing, not complaining.”
Muriel Siebert

91.

Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
Francis of Assisi

92.

“If you can get your head around your dream it means your dream isn’t big enough.”
Victoria Beckham

93.

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

94.

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.”
Benjamin Disraeli

95.

There is no substitute for hard work. Always be humble and hungry.”
Dwayne Johnson

96.

“Do not focus on numbers. Focus on doing what you do best.”
Cassey Ho

97.

Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.”
Anne Frank

98.

“If you don’t burn out at the end of each day, you’re a bum.”
George Lois

99.

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

100.

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”
Kahlil Gibran

101.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
Muhammad Ali

102.

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

103.

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
Yoda

104.

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

105.

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”
Simon Sinek

106.

“If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher purpose, you probably want to rethink what you’re doing.”
Ronald Heifetz

107.

We lose ourselves in the things we love, we find ourselves there too.”
Kristin Martz

108.

If you don’t feel it, flee from it. Go where you are celebrated, not merely tolerated.”
Paul F. Davis

109.

Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”
Patrick Süskind

110.

Work hard in silence; let success make the noise.”
Frank Ocean

111.

“From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I’ve felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people’s lives better.”
Richard Branson

112.

“If you know too much before the start, then you will get overwhelmed. Come up with an original idea, and don’t copy because there will be no passion. You need that otherworldly passion. Just start.”
Jeni Britton Bauer

113.

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

114.

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”
Sara Blakely

115.

“All happiness depends on courage and work.”
Honoré de Balzac

I hope you enjoyed this collection of inspirational quotes for work. What do you do to boost your motivation to pursue your goals at work?

Stay victorious!