101 Inspirational Business Quotes for 2020

Which are your favorite business quotes?

It’s time to inspire the next generation of fresh and innovative entrepreneurs!

So in the spirit of 2020, I’ve compiled a list of 101 inspirational business quotes to keep every entrepreneur out there inspired this year.

There are some amazing quotes on this list, including some from people like Warren Buffet, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuck, Maya Angelou, and Robert Kiyosaki.

101 Inspirational Business Quotes

I’ve grouped the list by individuals, listing all their quotes in one go if they have 2 or more inspirational business quotes featured on the list. Anybody who has just one quote featured on the list is in the ‘Miscellaneous’ section at the end, followed by the ‘Unknown’ section.

Any picture quotes included within the mix are bonuses! Don’t forget to share the list with your followers and friends on social media!

Gary Vaynerchuck

1. “Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.” – Gary Vaynerchuck

2. “Brands mature over time, like a marriage. The bond you feel with your spouse is different than when you first met each other. Excitement and discovery are replaced by comfort and depth.” – Gary Vaynerchuck

Richard Branson

3. “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” – Richard Branson

4. “Unless you dream, you’re not going to achieve anything.” – Richard Branson

Warren Buffet

5. “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” – Warren Buffett

6. “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffett

Oprah Winfrey

7. “I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey

8. “There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.” – Oprah Winfrey

Henry David Thoreau

9. “Beware of any enterprise requiring new clothes.” – Henry David Thoreau

10. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

Thomas Watson

11. “The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm.” – Thomas Watson

12. “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” – Thomas Watson

Seth Godin

13. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, trans-formative success is.” – Seth Godin

14. “You are not your resume, you are your work.” – Seth Godin

15. “There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.” – Seth Godin

16. “People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.” – Seth Godin

17. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.” – Seth Godin

Jim Rohn

18. “You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.” – Jim Rohn

19. “Your income is directly related to your philosophy, NOT the economy.” – Jim Rohn

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

Zig Ziglar

21. “Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” – Zig Ziglar

22. “Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember – the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.” – Zig Ziglar

Robert Kiyosaki

23. “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki

24. “In the real world, the smartest people are people who make mistakes and learn. In school, the smartest people don’t make mistakes.” – Robert Kiyosaki

25. “Don’t be addicted to money. Work to learn. don’t work for money. Work for knowledge.” – Robert Kiyosaki

26. “Often, the more money you make the more money you spend; that’s why more money doesn’t make you rich – assets make you rich.” – Robert Kiyosaki

27. “The moment you make passive income and portfolio income a part of your life, your life will change. Those words will become flesh.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Steve Jobs

28. “If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.” – Steve Jobs

29. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs

30. “If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.” – Steve Jobs

31. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs

Jeff Bezos

32. “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” – Jeff Bezos

33. “If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.” – Jeff Bezos

34. “I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.” – Jeff Bezos

35. “The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.” – Jeff Bezos

Bill Gates

36. “Most of our competitors were one-product wonders … They would do their one product, but never get their engineering sorted out.” – Bill Gates

37. “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates

38. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Henry Ford

39. “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” – Henry Ford

40. “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” – Henry Ford

41. “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” – Henry Ford

42. “I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.” – Henry Ford

Farrah Gray

43. “You know, you don’t have to have money to be a successful businessperson. You don’t need a college degree, you just need a lot of common sense backed up by a willingness to work hard.” – Farrah Gray

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

Maya Angelou

45. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

46. “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou

47. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” – Maya Angelou

Walt Disney

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

49. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

50. “If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember this whole thing was started by a mouse.” – Walt Disney

51. “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” – Walt Disney

52. “A man should never neglect his family for business.” – Walt Disney

53. “You reach a point where you don’t work for money.” – Walt Disney

Winston Churchill

54. “Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” – Winston Churchill

55. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

56. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

57. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

Miscellaneous Business Quotes

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

59. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon

60. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen

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

62. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” – Thomas Jefferson

63. “Look well to this day. Yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.” – Francis Gray

64. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight Eisenhower

65. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

66. “The first one gets the oyster the second gets the shell.” – Andrew Carnegie

67. “Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition – in having put forth the best within you.” – Henry J. Kaiser

68. “The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.” – Dennis Waitley

69. “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

70. “We generate fears while we sit. We over come them by action. Fear is natures way of warning us to get busy.” – Dr. Henry Link

71. “If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late.” – James Goldsmith

72. “One finds limits by pushing them.” – Herbert Simon

73. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda

74. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

75. “Even if you are on the right track, You’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

76. “My son is now an ‘entrepreneur’. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job.” – Ted Turner

77. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” – Norman Schwarzkopf

Miscellaneous Business Quotes (78-85)

78. “For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy.” – Bill O’ Reilly

79. “I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.” – Donald Trump

80. “To think is easy, to act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth

81. “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth

82. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon

83. “Business in a combination of War and sport.” – Andre Maurois

84. “Surviving a failure gives you more self–confidence. Failures are great learning tools… but they must be kept to a minimum.” – Jeffrey Immelt

85. “To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” – George Kneller

Miscellaneous Business Quotes (86-97)

86. “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” – Aristotle

87. “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

88. “To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” – Tony Dorsett

89. “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.” – Oscar Wilde

90. “Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.” – John Ciardi

91. “Hire character. Train skill.” – Peter Schutz

92. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville

93. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis

94. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston S. Churchill

95. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser

96. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller

97. “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