Business quotes

Being the owner of a business can be quite hard. There are so many things to consider, take hard choices and spend many hours to develop ideas. Running a business is both stressful and sometimes overwhelming. These amazing business quotes will save you time and give you some of the knowledge about the subject you need.

• If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late. – James Goldsmith
• Beware of any enterprise requiring new clothes. – Henry Thoreau
• “If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” — Jeff Bezos
• A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost. – Unknown
• “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” — Jeffrey Zeldman






• You are not your resume, you are your work. – Seth Godin
• “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” — Thomas Edison
• Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson
• “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” — Jack Dorsey
• One finds limits by pushing them. – Herbert Simon
• “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” — Ingvar Kamprad
• The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm. – Thomas J. Watson
• “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” — Mark Cuban

More Business quotes

• 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
• “There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” — Jason Fried
• You must be the change you wish to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” — Drew Houston
• 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
• “If there’s something you want to build, but the tech isn’t there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen.” — Dennis Crowley
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. – Albert Einstein
• “Fail often so you can succeed sooner.” — Tom Kelley
• There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them. – Seth Godin
• “It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.” — Edwin Land
• 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
• “Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors.” — Chris Dixon
• Even if you are on the right track, You’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
• “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” — Paul Rand
• Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt
• “It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.” — Paul Graham
• Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is. – Seth Godin
• “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” — Rob Kalin
• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. – Albert Einstein
• “Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.” — Tony Hsieh
• You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills. – Jim Rohn
• “I doubt I’ll ever go back to corporate work. Once you see the light, there is no turning back.” — Magnus Jepson






• The first one gets the oyster the second gets the shell. – Andrew Carnegie
• “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” — Biz Stone
• To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. – Sr. Thomas Watson
• “Turn a perceived risk into an asset.” — Aaron Patzer
• Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight Eisenhower
• “Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the up market.” — Jason Calacanis
• Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. – Napoleon Bonaparte
• “I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.” — Jake Nickell
• Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right! – Henry Ford
• “See things in the present, even if they are in the future.” — Larry Ellison
• Every accomplishment starts with a decision to try. – Unknown
• “If you’re going to put your product in beta – put your business model in beta with it.” — Joe Kraus
• Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. – Coco Chanel
• “It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.” — Jason Cohen
• People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want. – Seth Godin
• “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” — Jeff Bezos
• A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts. – Richard Branson
• “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” — Larry Page
• 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
• “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman
• A man should never neglect his family for business. – Walt Disney
• “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” — Reid Hoffman
• Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition – in having put forth the best within you. – Henry J. Kaiser
• “The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” — Reid Hoffman
• Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. – Cyril Northcote
• “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” — Steve Case
• Business is more exciting than any game. – Lord Beaverbrook
• “Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.” — Tony Hsieh
• Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations. – Steve Jobs
• “What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” — Dave Thomas






• The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do. – Roy L. Smith
• “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.” — Henry Ford
• I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah Winfrey
• 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

Amazing list with many Business quotes

• “Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” — Bruce Levin
• 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
• “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” — Benjamin Franklin
• My son is now an ‘entrepreneur’. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job. – Ted Turner
• “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.” — Fred Wilson
• Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. – Seth Godin
• “We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.” — Pete Cashmore
• The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. – Unknown
• “Always deliver more than expected.” — Larry Page
• Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day. – Gary Vaynerchuck
• “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
• 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
• “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” — Richard Branson
• Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games. – Babe Ruth
• “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” — Bill Gates
• Surviving a failure gives you more self–confidence. Failures are great learning tools… but they must be kept to a minimum. – Jeffrey Immelt
• “You just have to pay attention to what people need and what has not been done.” — Russell Simmons
• Victory goes to the player who makes the next–to–last mistake. – Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower
• “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.” — Reid Hoffman
• I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. – Donald Trump
• “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” — Caterina Fake
• The only way around is through. – Robert Frost
• “Trust your instincts.” — Estee Lauder
• To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth
• “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.” — Ray Kroc
• To the degree we’re not living our dreams; our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves. – Peter McWilliams






• “Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.” — James Cash Penney
• You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take – Wayne Gretzky
• “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs
• The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many. – John Naisbitt
• “Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.” — Lisa Stone
• 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
• “If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.” — Pierre Omidyar
• Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities. – Seth Godin
• “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” —Josh James
• Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules. – Seth Godin
• “An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.” — Edwin Land
• All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. – Aristotl
• “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
• To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. – Tony Dorsett
• “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis
• To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. – George Kneller
• “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
• Business in a combination of War and sport. – Andre Maurois
• “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
• 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
• “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
• Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more. – Oscar Wilde
• “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
• Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor. – John Ciardi
• “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
• Hire character. Train skill. – Peter Schutz
• “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.” – Anonymous
• There is no security on the earth, there is only opportunity. – General Douglas MacArthur
• “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Anonymous
• Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. – Unknown






• “All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” – Michael John Bobak
• Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. – Howard Aiken
• “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
• For maximum attention, nothing beats a good mistake. – Unknown
• “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell
• Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked. – Warren Buffett
• “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jim Rohn
• The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you. – Bette Midler
• “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure–It is: Try to please everybody.” – Herbert Bayard Swope
• It takes more than capital to swing business. You’ve got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by — Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics. – Ren Mulford Jr.
• “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
• A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor. – Unknown
• “Some people dream of success while others wake up and work.” – Unknown
• Your income is directly related to your philosophy, NOT the economy. – Jim Rohn
• Your time is precious, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. – Steve Jobs
• It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin
• Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot easier to launch work that matters. – Seth Godin
• The NBA is never just a business. It’s always business. It’s always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal. – Mark Cuban
• Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker. – Seth Godin
• The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer’s place. – Orison Swett Marden
• You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose. – Dr. Seuss
• I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them! – C. J. Walker
• A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. – David Brinkley
• To win without risk is to triumph without glory. – Pierre Corneille
• People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. – Seth Godin
• People are best convinced by things they themselves discover. – Ben Franklin
• Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from. – Seth Godin
• Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates
• Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid – Einstein
• I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages. – Robert Bosch






• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Edison
• Leadership is doing what is right when no one is watching. – George Van Valkenburg
• Do or do not. There is no try. – Yoda
• A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time. – Unknown
• Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches. – Napoleon Hill
• In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later. – Harold Geneen
• Those who say it can not be done, should not interrupt those doing it. – Chinese Proverb
• The absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying customers. – John Egan

The last 20 Business quotes

• To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business. – J. Paul Getty
• The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoon
• Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating. – Denis Waitley
• If you would like to know the value of money, try to borrow some. – Benjamin Franklin
• Get busy living or get busy dying. – The Shawshank Redemption
• Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. – Unknown
• 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
• Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. – David Rockefeller
• Are you a serial idea–starting person? The goal is to be an idea–shipping person. – Seth Godin
• The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. – Unknown
• Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it. – Debbi Fields
• If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. – Ray Kroc
• The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. – Lilly Tomlin
• “Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt
• “We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.” — Abigail Adams
• Long–range planning works best in the short term. – Doug Evelyn
• “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” — Michael Jordan
• “After all is said and done, a lot more will be said than done.” — Anonymous
• “Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.” – Marilyn vos Savant
• Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. – Norman Schwarzkopf

Here is a video with Business quotes (Created by Justin Bryant)

I hope these business quotes have given you some inspiration for how you should run your business. Perhaps the right mindset and what matters most: never give up. It can be as previously written very stressful to run a business. But with a little perseverance and the right spirit, you can achieve a lot.