100 Quotes From Successful Entrepreneurs to Motivate You

Entrepreneurship is mostly a long walk in the dark. A good quote, at the right moment, is a small torch. Below are a hundred lines from founders, investors, and operators who have been there — organised by theme so you can find what you need when you need it.

Two notes before the list. First, attribution: online quote culture has a misattribution problem — many "Einstein", "Churchill", and "Lincoln" quotes circulating on the internet were not said by those people. Where an attribution below is contested or improbable, that is flagged. Second, a finding from motivation research worth knowing: Deci, Koestner and Ryan's meta-analysis of 128 experiments (Psychological Bulletin, APA, 1999) established that performance-contingent external rewards undermine intrinsic motivation for activities people already enjoy. Quotes work differently — they are not rewards, they are reminders. The way to use this list is to pick two or three that resonate with a struggle you're actually facing, and keep them visible at that moment. Reading all one hundred at once produces a temporary lift and then nothing.

On starting

1. "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." — Walt Disney
2. "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." — Arthur Ashe
3. "Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard." — Guy Kawasaki
4. "You don't build a business, you build people, and then people build the business." — Zig Ziglar
5. "Get up, stand up. Move the needle every single day." — Gary Vaynerchuk
6. "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." — Reid Hoffman
7. "Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again." — Richard Branson
8. "It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen." — Scott Belsky
9. "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." — Benjamin Franklin
10. "Begin anywhere." — John Cage

On resilience

11. "Fall seven times, stand up eight." — Japanese proverb
12. "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time." — Thomas Edison
13. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." — Thomas Edison
14. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." — Winston Churchill
15. "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence." — Calvin Coolidge
16. "If you're going through hell, keep going." — attributed to Winston Churchill (no verified primary source)
17. "The only way to do great work is to love what you do." — Steve Jobs
18. "Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure." — Napoleon Hill
19. "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying." — Michael Jordan
20. "It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." — Babe Ruth

On customers

21. "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." — Bill Gates
22. "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." — Peter Drucker
23. "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it." — Simon Sinek
24. "If you're not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is." — Jan Carlzon
25. "Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves." — Steve Jobs
26. "We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts." — Jeff Bezos
27. "Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten." — Gucci family saying (widely attributed; exact origin unclear)
28. "Make a customer, not a sale." — Katherine Barchetti
29. "The best advertising is done by satisfied customers." — Philip Kotler
30. "Sales without service is just a transaction." — Anon

On focus

31. "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." — Stephen Covey
32. "Focusing is about saying no." — Steve Jobs
33. "What gets measured gets managed." — Peter Drucker
34. "Do few things but do them well." — Francis of Assisi
35. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." — Leonardo da Vinci
36. "If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice." — Unknown
37. "Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence." — Paul J. Meyer
38. "You can do anything, but not everything." — David Allen
39. "Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves." — Dale Carnegie
40. "Action is the foundational key to all success." — widely attributed to Picasso; original source unverified

On leadership

41. "A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." — John C. Maxwell
42. "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." — William Arthur Ward
43. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." — Warren Bennis
44. "Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart." — Roy T. Bennett
45. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." — Peter Drucker
46. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." — John Quincy Adams
47. "Hire character. Train skill." — Peter Schutz
48. "You don't build a reputation on what you are going to do." — Henry Ford
49. "A boss has the title. A leader has the people." — Simon Sinek
50. "Leadership is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge." — Simon Sinek

On product

51. "Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like." — Brian Chesky
52. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." — Jeff Hammerbacher
53. "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." — Steve Jobs
54. "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." — Steve Jobs
55. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." — attributed to Henry Ford (this exact wording is not found in Ford's documented writings; the sentiment is plausible)
56. "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency." — Bill Gates
57. "A product is worth what a customer will pay for it." — Bjarke Ingels
58. "Make it work, make it right, make it fast." — Kent Beck
59. "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
60. "The product is the marketing." — Seth Godin

On risk and fear

61. "The biggest risk is not taking any risk." — Mark Zuckerberg
62. "I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done." — Lucille Ball
63. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." — Anaïs Nin
64. "Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will." — Suzy Kassem
65. "In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity." — Albert Einstein
66. "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." — Henry Ford
67. "Do one thing every day that scares you." — Eleanor Roosevelt
68. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." — Nelson Mandela
69. "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life." — Muhammad Ali
70. "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." — attributed to Henry Ford

On money

71. "It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep." — Robert Kiyosaki
72. "Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." — Benjamin Franklin
73. "Never depend on a single income. Make investment to create a second source." — Warren Buffett
74. "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." — Warren Buffett
75. "A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business." — Henry Ford
76. "If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way." — Napoleon Hill
77. "Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality." — common finance saying
78. "Opportunities don't happen. You create them." — Chris Grosser
79. "Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs." — widely attributed to Zig Ziglar; exact source unconfirmed
80. "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." — Jim Rohn

On time

81. "Lost time is never found again." — Benjamin Franklin
82. "Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time." — Jim Rohn
83. "Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else." — Peter Drucker
84. "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." — Michael Altshuler
85. "You may delay, but time will not." — Benjamin Franklin
86. "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein." — H. Jackson Brown Jr.
87. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." — Steve Jobs
88. "The key is in not spending time, but in investing it." — Stephen R. Covey
89. "Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it." — Arthur Schopenhauer
90. "You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." — Charles Buxton

On the long game

91. "Vision without execution is hallucination." — Thomas Edison
92. "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world." — widely attributed to Einstein; no verified primary source has been found
93. "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." — Epictetus
94. "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." — Winston Churchill
95. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." — Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle in The Story of Philosophy (1926)
96. "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." — widely attributed to Mark Twain; no confirmed primary source
97. "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." — Steve Jobs
98. "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." — Wayne Gretzky
99. "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." — Albert Einstein
100. "Don't count the days, make the days count." — Muhammad Ali

How to use them

Quotes don't build companies; they steady the hand of the person who does. The research on goal attainment suggests that specific, committed actions — not inspiration — drive sustained performance. Pick two or three lines from this list that speak to an obstacle you're facing right now. Put them somewhere you'll see them during the specific moments the obstacle appears. Come back to the full list when the weather in the work changes.

For the motivation science behind why some of these ideas hold up — and what the research says about turning inspiration into consistent action — 4 insights from motivation research is the companion reading. For the book-length treatments behind these ideas, self-help books recommended by top psychologists covers the foundational texts. For a curated set of quotes specifically on leadership rather than entrepreneurship, 38 motivational quotes on leadership covers that ground.