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200+ Best Entrepreneurship Quotes of All Time

I’ve taken time to come up with this list of some of the very best, most inspiring and motivational quotes for entrepreneurs, these quotes are centred around success, failures, money, wisdom, leadership, motivation and they are meant to inspire and motivate you, please feel free to leave your comments or add to what is already here

Inspirational Quotes & Motivational Quotes for Entrepreneurs

1. Observe the masses and do the opposite – James Caan
2. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve – Napoleon Hill
3. Example is not the main thing in influencing other people; it’s the only thing. – Abraham Lincoln
4. Be nice to geek’s, you’ll probably end up working for one. – Bill Gates
5. Failing to plan is planning to fail. – Chinese Proverb
6. I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby
7. The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect. – Adam Osborne
8. All of my friends were doing babysitting jobs. I wanted money without the job. – Adam Horwitz
9. All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea. – Napoleon Hill
10. Its better to own the racecourse then the race horse. – Unknown
11. One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching. – Mooie
12. A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napoleon Hill
13. An entrepreneur assumes the risk and is dedicated and committed to the success of whatever he or she undertakes. – Victor Kiam
14. Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t. – Anonymous
15. If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share. – W. Clement Stone
16. A bad workman blames his tools. – Chinese Proverb
17. A person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the man doing it – Chinese Proverb
18. If you ain’t making waves, you ain’t kickin’ hard enough. – Unknown
19. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. – Dale Carnegie
20. The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money. – Tom Hooper
21. You don’t buy a nice car and get rich you get rich and buy a nice car. – Unknown
22. I think when I was on the corporate ladder, it was very difficult to maintain the hours. It’s a little easier when you have you’re an entrepreneur. – Tory Burch
23. Nothing turns off an investor more than when an entrepreneur comes in with a ridiculous valuation. – Kevin Harrington
24. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. – Marion C. Garretty
25. Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you. – Mark Cuban
26. You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it. – John Lennon
27. You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. – Zig Ziglar
28. Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production. – Joseph A. Schumpeter
29. Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. – Mark Twain
30. Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life. – John F. Kennedy
31. Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything. – W. Clement Stone
32. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoo
33. You take on the responsibility for making your dream a reality. – Les Brown
34. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. – Nolan Bushnell
35. When you cease to dream you cease to live. – Malcolm Forbes
36. I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life.. it’s money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. – Walt Disney
37. A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
38. Today’s developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise. – Arthur Erickson
39. I’ve been an entrepreneur three times. I started three companies. – Marc Andreessen
40. I treat business a bit like a computer game. I count money as points. I’m doing really well: making lots of money and lots of points. – Michael Dunlop
41. Every choice you make has an end result. – Zig Ziglar
42. After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts. – Aristotle
43. If you start with nothing and end up with nothing, there’s nothing lost. – Michael Dunlop
44. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain
45. Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves. – Zig Ziglar
46. I wanted to be a 150% entrepreneur and a 150% mom, and I found that I was having a very hard time doing both. I was about 75% and 75% – still better than 100%, but not what I was accustomed to at work. – Barbara Corcoran
47. If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. – Mario Andretti
48. Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. – Zig Ziglar
49. You’ve got to stop doing all the things that people have tried, tested, and found out don’t work. – Michael Dunlop
50. Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together. – Napoleon Hill
51. Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games. – Babe Ruth
52. Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity. – Will Smith
53. Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there. – Will Smith
54. Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. – Napoleon Hill
55. One can get anything if he is willing to help enough others get what they want. – Zig Ziglar
56. The entrepreneur builds an enterprise; the technician builds a job. – Michael Gerber
57. One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. – Andre Gide
58. I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. – Michael Jordan
59. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. – Agatha Christie
60. Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual. – Natalie Clifford Barney
61. When I finished school, I took my entire life savings – $5,000 – and invested it in a business. I was young. I was inexperienced. But I was an entrepreneur, and I was proud. And in six weeks, I was broke. – Mark Warner
62. If you’re not living life on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. – Anonymous
63. Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. – Maya Angelou
64. If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal. – Zig Ziglar
65. Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be. – W. Clement Stone
66. Everything started as nothing. – Ben Weissenstein
67. Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it. – W. Clement Stone
68. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got! – Alan Scott
69. Vision without action is daydreaming and action without vision is a nightmare. – Anon
70. Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless. – Tim Blixseth
71. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. – Walt Disney
72. I’ve been acting since I was 10. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I guess something along those lines. I wouldn’t want a 9-5 job. – Will Estes
73. That’s a tough question; I’ve been acting since I was 10. My dad was an entrepreneur, so I guess something along those lines. I wouldn’t want a 9-5 job. – Will Estes
74. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas Edison
75. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent. – Thomas Edison
76. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Edison
77. Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up. – Thomas J. Watson
78. To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. – Thomas J. Watson
79. Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. – Thomas J. Watson
80. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein
81. The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Peter Drucker
82. Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. – Albert Einstein
83. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. – Cicero
84. If you’re not learning while you’re earning, you’re cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation. – Napoleon Hill
85. Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said. – Jim Rohn
86. It is always the start that requires the greatest effort. – James Cash Penney
87. The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. – Chinese Proverb
88. Failure is not about insecurity. It’s about lack of execution. – Jeffrey Gitomer
89. When you go to buy, don’t show your silver. – Chinese Proverb
90. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. – Jim Rohn
91. Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it. – Joe Penna
92. If you think that you are going to love something, give it a try. You’re going to kick yourself in the butt for the rest of your life if you don’t. – Joe Penna
93. In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm. In the real world all rests on perseverance. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
94. What is not started will never get finished. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
95. There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy. – John Baldacci
96. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. – John C. Maxwell
97. A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them. – John C. Maxwell
98. Have the end in mind and every day make sure your working towards it. – Ryan Allis
99. Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners. – Robert T. Kiyosaki
    There are two rules for success. 1) Never tell everything you know. – Roger H. Lincoln
100. An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it. – Roy Ash
101. Not a single person whose name is worth remembering lived a life of ease. – Ryan P. Allis
102. The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom. – Silvio Berlusconi
103. You can’t ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. – Steve Jobs
104. There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
105. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. – Jack Welch
106. If you live for weekends or vacations, your shit is broken. – Gary Vaynerchuk
107. Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom. – General George Patton
108. I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate. – George Burns
109. Leadership is doing what is right when no one is watching. – George Van Valkenburg
110. He who begins many things finishes but few. – German Proverb
111. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. – Grace Hopper
112. A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. – Henry Ford
113. If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way. – Napoleon Hill
114. As a rule, we find what we look for; we achieve what we get ready for. – James Cash Penney
115. If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock. – Claude McDonald
116. Fall seven times, stand up eight. – Japanese Proverb
117. The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. – Colin R. Davis
118. Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. – William B. Sprague
119. Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. – Napoleon Hill
120. Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure. – Napoleon Hill
121. The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. – Peter Drucker
122. The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said. – Peter F. Drucker
123. You should always stay hungry. Stay hungry, so you can eat. – Syed Balkhi
124. My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job. – Ted Turner
125. A savvy entrepreneur will not always look for investment money, first. – Daymond John
126. Hire character. Train skill. – Peter Schultz
127. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader
128. An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
129. I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author. – Ray Kurzweil
130. But as an entrepreneur you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you’re confident that you’ll catch a bird flying by. It’s an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go splat because the bird doesn’t come by, but a few times it does. – Reed Hastings
131. An entrepreneur must pitch a potential investor for what the company is worth as well as sell the dream on how much of a profit can be made. – Daymond John
132. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. – Derek Bok
133. As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. – Donald Trump
134. A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur asked me a question sometime ago, he said, ‘When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?’ I think it’s a great question. I’ll tell you, in my life I’ve never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging. – Ted Cruz
135. Lend your friend $20. If he doesn’t pay you back then he’s not your friend. Money well spent. – Ted Nicolas
136. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, but it’s never been about the money. I like a challenge, the harder the better. – Terry McAuliffe
137. Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly, I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it. – Theodore Roosevelt
138. Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone. – Thomas Carlyle
139. First of all I would make about 80% of the people law-abiding citizens again. The policy which is carried out now makes every entrepreneur and businessman a thief against his own will. – Aleksandr Lebed
140. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. – Jeff Bezos
141. The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it. – William James
142. Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves. – E. Joseph Cossman
143. The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, ‘Go!’ – a leader says, ‘Let’s go!’. – E. M. Kelly
144. Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure. – Earl Wilson
145. Go Big, or Go Home. – Eliza Dushku
146. Start today, not tomorrow. If anything, you should have started yesterday. – Emil Motycka
147. You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills. – Jim Rohn
148. The biggest failure you can have in life is not trying at all. – Emil Motycka
149. Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory. – Fortune Cookie
150. Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process. – Jim Rohn
151. I’ve always worked very, very hard, and the harder I worked, the luckier I got. – Alan Bond
152. Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
153. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. – Wiston Churchill
154. Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneur will and spirit of the American people, somewhere else. – Allen West
155. If you are going to ask yourself life-changing questions, be sure to do something with the answers. – Bo Bennett
156. Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it. – Napoleon Hill
157. I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep. – Charles Maurice
158. Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice. – Peter Drucker
159. For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth. – Bo Bennett
160. To win without risk is to triumph without glory. – Corneille
161. Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it. – Jim Rohn
162. Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic. – Dale Carnegie
     Ideas are worthless. – Dane Carlson
163. The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal. – David Geffen
164. In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. – David Ogilvy
165. Make it happen now, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is a loser’s excuse. – Andrew Fashion
166. Formal education will make you a living. Self education will make you a fortune. – Jim Rohn
167. The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. – Benjamin Disraeli
168. Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. – Benjamin Franklin
169. If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions. – Catherine Cook
170. The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch. – Jim Rohn
171. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Chinese Proverb
172. If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. – Jim Rohn
173. The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place. – Jim Rohn
174. I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going. – Richard Branson
175. Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea. – Jim Rohn
176. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. – Bill Cosby
177. The longer you’re not taking action the more money you’re losing. – Carrie Wilkerson
178. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates
179. Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know. – Jim Rohn
180. Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company. – Booker T. Washington
181. Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson
182. 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
183. You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be. – Robert Collier
184. Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work. – Robert Orben
185. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. – Henry Ford
186. Leaders don’t force people to follow, they invite them on a journey. – Charles S. Lauer
187. If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals. – Brian Tracy
188. Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are asking, What’s in it for me? – Brian Tracy
189. The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. – Confucius
190. Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford
191. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. – Henry Ford
192. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. – Jack Welch
193. I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success. – Jack Welch
194. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have – Zig Ziglar
195. If I had eight hours to chop down a tree I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
196. Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life. – JFK

More Quotes (Biblical quotes for Entrepreneurs)

1. The hand of the diligent will rule. – Proverbs 12:24
2. He who does not work, neither shall he eat – St Paul
3. Do you see a man who excels in his work, he will stand before kings. – Prov 22:29
4. Be diligent to know the state of your flocks and attend to your herds. – Prov 27:23
5. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize – I Corinthians 9:24 NIV
6. Without the guidance of good leaders a nation falls. But many good advisers can save it – Proverbs 11:14 NIRV