51 Inspirational Work Quotes To Fire Up Your Work Life

Updated Dec 2, 2022.
inspirational-work-quotes

Finding inspiration amidst chaos and obstacles is an uphill task. You’ll find a list of inspirational quotes for work and what they mean to guide you through a rough patch. These motivational quotes will give you the right push you need to get up and work.

Ready to take a look at these motivational quotes and learn key lessons? Let’s go!

Powerful Inspirational Work Quotes For Effective Work

01
“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

People who achieve success and live fulfilled have the same time as you. They set their eyes on their dreams and goals and didn’t look back. Not having enough time is not an excuse. What differentiates you from them is that they learned to make judicious use of their time. So, if they can do it, you can do it. Just learn to prioritize and make sure every second counts.

02
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
—Thomas Jefferson

Your attitude sets the tone and tempo of your tasks. If you believe something can't be done, it reflects in your attitude towards that task. You won’t get good results because you won’t give it your best. On the other hand, when you are excited about a certain task, against people’s odds and beliefs, you will give it your best result. You achieve victory even if it is not a complete one.

03
“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”
—Denis

The same number of hours in a day the rich have, the poor and middle class has. It is 24 hours, with no addition or subtraction. What you do with each passing minute determines how you want your life to be.

Let’s say you made some mistakes in the past. Do you want to be stuck in the past, making regrets? Or do you want to take charge of tomorrow and set things right?

Remember, you have all the time tomorrow to right that wrong, to begin again, and start afresh.

04
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
—Abraham Lincoln

Stop waiting for the perfect time; there is no such thing as the right time. Go out there and make it work. If you decide to wait, you will be fed with scraps from the table of those who went out to hustle. So, quit staying around and waiting for the perfect moment to take action. Do it now! It is better to do it scared than not to do it all.

05
“Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”
— Will Rogers

Even if you are on the right track, you must continue to move. No stagnation is allowed. When you stop moving forward, you stop recording progress; worse still, someone can push you off the track. To see success, you need to keep moving forward even if you’re on the right part. What’s the right track without movement? It will constitute a nuisance.

06
“Work hard and be kind and amazing things will happen.”
— Conan O'Brien, comedian

To achieve great things, you need a touch of these two magic – hard work and kindness. You need to do both, not just one. The more you work hard, the more you get better. In working hard, you learn, strive, and grow. You can’t achieve the success you want by yourself; you need relationships. When nurtured and grown, these relationships blossom into something beautiful and set you on the path to achieving great things. The way you treat others determines your success or failure. People will forever remember how you made them feel if they forget everything else.

07
“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”
— Seneca

Opportunity matches with preparation. You create your luck; when you are prepared, there are chances that you start seeing things clearer. You start opportunities that have been existing, but you weren’t aware of because you were not prepared. Preparation puts you in the spotlight of opportunities, and when it happens, it is termed luck.

08
“Someone, at some point, came up with this very bad idea that an ordinary individual couldn't make a difference in the world. I think that's just a horrible thing.”
— John Skoll

Your success is not tied to your background. Anybody from anywhere can be prominent in life. So, whether you are an ordinary individual or from a poor background, you can be anything and do anything. You can create a whole new world and make a difference in the world. It is all in you.

09
“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
— Harper Lee

You don't quit half away; you finish whatever you started. Yes, it may seem all odds are against you, but that is not enough reason to quit. Keep trying until the very end. Sometimes you take on tasks; you’ve already foreseen the end that you’ll lose. However, that is not enough reason to quit. Real courage is seen in knowing you’ll lose and giving the task your best effort.

10
“Developing a good work ethic is key. Apply yourself at whatever you do, whether you're a janitor or taking your first summer job, because that work ethic will be reflected in everything you do in life.” 
— Tyler Perry

Your work ethics guide and checkmate your decisions and activities concerning work in the workplace. People with positive work ethics will consider the ethical implication of whatever he wants to do. Then, establish a clear boundary over what is deemed appropriate and not. To build a good work ethic and earn more, you need to consider the following;

  • Eliminate distractions, and don’t allow mistakes to ruin your progress
  • Be focused and persistent.
  • Be responsible and reliable.
  • Adopt a “do things correctly” and a “can do” mindset
  • Develop self-discipline.
11
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
— Harriet Beecher Stowe

When you give up, you allow the situation or problem to win. Keep your hope alive and know you can conquer anything life throws your way. You may not know the time you want to give up may be the time that all tides are to turn in your favor. Yes, it may not be easy to keep pursuing and not seeing results, but keep your hope alive and keep pushing.

12
“If a mind thinks with a believing attitude, one can do amazing things.”
—Norman Vincent

To achieve your desired success, you need to believe in yourself and what you can do. Belief travel miles than any skill or talent. Your talent is dragged to the mud when you don’t believe in yourself and what you can do.

Belief walks hand in hand with the attitude and ability to complete a task. The moment your mindset is a positive one, everything else aligns. You start giving all tasks your best effort.

13
“I have learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
—Maya Angelou

No matter the damage or the extent to which things didn’t work out, life continues. Don't be stuck in yesterday and refuse to see tomorrow. Tomorrow is an opportunity to make all things right. It is an opportunity to try again and give your life your best again. Therefore, don’t put a pause on your life based on the events of yesterday.

14
“Your work will fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
— Steve Jobs

A greater portion of your life will be filled with your work. Even if you work from home, you may still spend long hours to experience maximum satisfaction in that work, ensuring that it is something that you believe is great work. For it to be great work for you, it ought t be something you love. While making a career choice or deciding the career path to take, ensure you don’t just take up any work for a long time. Take up work you believe in and love. That way, you will be satisfied.

15
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
— Hermann Hesse

You get to decide what to do with every mistake, misfortune, or evil that comes your way. You can either decide to let it weigh you down or pick vital lessons that will be applied in the subsequent work. Use every misfortune that comes your way as a ladder to transform your work into something of value.

16
“If something is wrong, fix it now. But train yourself not to worry, worry fixes nothing.”
— Ernest Hemingway

In the course of our pursuance of tasks, mistakes are bound to happen. You mustn’t get everything right at first. Therefore when such errors occur, it is left for you to fix them. Worrying over the damage caused or the stuff not done right won’t change anything. It won’t fix the mess made.

Get up on your feet and fix it; if you don’t fix it, it just keeps staring right at your face. Setting smart goals makes it easier to break your workload into sizeable and achievable milestones. This enables you to work effectively.

17
“Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you're willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.”
— Lou Holtz

Your talent is not the beginning and the end of your success. It could be the beginning, but not the end. It just merely shows your ability and what you can do. Your motivation shows the lengths you are willing to go for it, while your attitude determines how well you do it. Having talent alone is never enough. You ought to possess talent, motivation, and a positive attitude to achieve your desired success.

18
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
— Anne Frank

There is no magical time to start to change the world. There is no agreed time next week, tomorrow, during the holidays, or during the new year. You start when you want to start; you can even start at this very minute. You can decide to change and make the world better with each breath you take.

Don’t wait around for something huge to come so you can label it a change. The little, tiny, small deeds result in long-lasting change. Even if it might not seem to be changing the world as a whole, it impacts both you and the environment in which you live.

19
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
— Henry Ford

Your work and capability are termed quality work when it retains everything it stands for when no one is looking. People engage in eye service; they only give their best when people are around, which is wrong. Let your work speak for itself whether anyone is around or not.

Keep working and building yourself.

20
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
— Dale Carnegie

Success is best achieved when you love what you are doing. People who have no passion or excitement for what they do rarely succeed. This is because once you don’t love what you do, you will rarely give it 100%. Look for a man filled with passion for his work, and you will see a man giving what he loves his best. A man who loves what he does derives excitement from work.

21
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal .”
— Henry Ford

Obstacles are stumbling blocks that try to stop you from achieving your dream. To achieve success, you must overcome obstacles. Setting goals is not enough; actualizing those goals are paramount. To actualize those goals, you need to overcome obstacles.

To overcome your obstacles, fix your eyes on the goals. To keep your eyes on the goal, do the following:

  • Write down your goal.
  • Read them aloud to yourself
  • Meditate on those goals.
  • Let each step you take every day be targeted towards achieving the goal.
22
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
— Franklin D Roosevelt

Money is not the key to happiness; wealth is never the answer to a sad life. True happiness is experienced in achieving your dream, in basking in the euphoria of creativity. If you want to experience true happiness in life, everything shouldn’t be all about money. Place your root in your creative effort and your dreams.

23
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
— Helen Keller

In life, we experience many good and bad scenarios, but the worst scenario is the one we blame on ourselves and the situations around us. When you blame yourself or a situation for a misfortune, you tend to lose faith in yourself.

You tend to forget or ignore the happiness regardless of the fact when one door of happiness closes, another opens.

Individuals who complain about locked doors have never genuinely looked for an open door for themselves. When a door in life closes, another one likely opens, and that one may be even better than the first. You can only recognize that possibility because you are too preoccupied with complaining about the happiness that has been closed.

24
“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you're proud to live.”
— Anne Sweeney

Society has defined success as flashy cars, ambitious careers, high income, and many other things. You must not go with society’s definition of success. Find your definition of success; play with it based on your rules, and then build your dream life. Never judge your success by another man’s standard or rules.

25
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
—Farrah Gray

Everyone has a dream. If you stop pursuing yours because of obstacles and challenges, someone else will employ you to build theirs. Building another man’s dream is not wrong nor taboo, but what happens to your dream while building another man’s dream? Do you intend to help the man build his dream for life, or will you pick up yours along the way? No matter what you do, let every step you take each day be a step further toward your dreams.

26
“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”
— Harry Golden

There is never an easy route to success. However, some people tend to achieve success faster than others. The only way to change your supposed “hard luck” is to work hard. Your hard work is your key to good luck, so make good use of this key.

Inspirational Work Quotes To Empower Your Team To Work Hard

27
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.“
—Confucius

The man with a dream doesn’t wait to acquire everything needed to achieve it, nor does he wait to achieve it all at once. The journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with a step. The actions and steps you take today are the little steps that determine your dreams. Don’t wait sitting around until you possess all you need and expect to achieve all at once; start taking little steps that will set you on the path to your dreams.

28
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
— Henry David Thoreau

One of the basic things to do in life is to discover your dreams and passion, then start taking steps toward that dreams. When you take confident steps in the direction of your dreams, you will meet with success. Success doesn’t meet you up in your comfort zone. It must meet you in the process of doing something. Success is for the prepared, not for the lazy.

29
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
— Barrack Obama

While accomplishing tasks, the feeling of hopelessness always seems to strike. The moment you pay attention to this feeling, it takes over your whole being and stops you from achieving your dreams. The best way to snap out of this feeling is to keep

working, even when it seems that nothing is working well. You don’t sit around and wait for everything to become magically fine. If you want things to be fine, go out there and get it done. In doing so, you are filling yourself with hope and the nation at large.

30
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
— Michael Jordan

There’s a limit to which your talent can take you. Your talent can open the door to opportunities. It can also give you wins. However, if you intend to go far, you will need teamwork and intelligence. Teamwork is vital to all businesses, and its importance cannot be over-emphasized. Some of the benefits of teamwork include:

  • Improved service
  • Improved creativity
  • Division of labor
  • Improves efficiency and performance in the workplace
  • Enhances communication skill
  • Encourages innovation and professional development.
31
“Thirty years ago, my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird”.
— Anne Lamott

To be effective, most people tend to rush their tasks believing that delivery is the ultimate. But what good is the delivery if the entire task is filled with errors? Take the task you are assigned one after the other, don’t try rushing it to avoid being overwhelmed. Life should be taken step by step, not rushed like the wind.

32
“Most people miss opportunity because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
— Thomas Edison

Most people don’t want to work, and yet they claim there are no opportunities. Opportunity only meets a prepared man’ an unprepared man has no deal with opportunity. It is a sightseeing adventure for him. To see opportunities and grab them by their collar, you must be willing to use them. In other words, you must be ready to work.

33
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
— John Quincy Adams

Your actions can either make or mar people, though it is all dependent on the path you choose to take. You can choose to inspire people to be better than whoever they are now, inspire them to dream, learn, and become more. You can also choose to talk down on their dreams and discourage them from their goals. The mark of a true leader is seen in his inspiration to others to become better versions of themselves.

34
“Hard work spotlights the character of people. Some turn up their sleeves. Some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.”
— Sam Ewing

Hard work shows people’s character. At the mention of hard work, several traits manifest in people. The first set is people who turn up their sleeves, meaning people who are ready to get to work once there is a task. The next set is those who turn up their noses, meaning those who feel they are too good to do what needs to be done. They feel the work is beneath them. The last set of people is those who don’t turn up at all, meaning they are too busy to help with the busy. They will love to come around but are too busy to lend a helping hand.

Which category do you belong to from the list? Will you show up or feel the work is beneath you or even claim to be too busy to do anything?

35
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you dare to lose sight of the shore.”
— William Faulkner

Comfort zones have made people too comfortable that they are scared of leaving. However, if you don’t come out of your comfort zone, you cannot achieve the desired success in your life.

So, try to be courageous enough to leave your comfort zone. Explore the vastness of the world, and explore your skills and talents. Don’t be confined to a particular space.

Motivational Work Quotes To Boost Your Hustle Spirit

36
“You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr

You don't have to figure it all out before beginning your journey. There are so many uncertainties, which makes the journey more adventurous.

Don’t wait till you have all the answers and resources before taking that leap of faith to pursue your dreams. The more you wait, the more you keep stalling your dreams. Take the first step though you may not have everything you need at your disposal.

37
“It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.”
— Muhammad Ali

In the quest to achieve dreams and goals, it is not the long journey that wears you out. It could be the little things that deplete our energy, such as low self-esteem, indiscipline, procrastination, post-trauma, and many more. The first thing to do is discover what depletes your energy to move forward and tackle them. Identify and address these pebbles in your shoes so you can climb well.

38
“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
— Dale Carnegie

Start with the hard jobs for any assigned task before taking care of the easier ones.

Start with the hardest task and get it done. Then, finishing the entire task will be made easy. If you start with the easy tasks, when it gets to the tough ones, you will be easily intimidated, which may even demotivate you.

If you start with the easy task, you may just have 20% of your time left for the tough tasks, which is not a good plan. This is best achieved by developing a strategy before embarking on any project. If you plan extensively for a project, you have a good start. However, if you have no plans and special projects in a random order, you are in for confusion and trouble.

39
“The future depends on what you do today.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

No matter the size of your dreams and goals, if you don’t do anything today, you won’t achieve it. To reach that goal you want yourself, take action today. Let every step you take each day be a step closer to those dreams.

40
“You will never plow a field if you only turn it over in your mind.”
— Irish Proverb

Conceiving the idea alone is never enough. Talking about it and meditating on it, too, is not enough. It would be best if you took action. Take steps today that will lead to your dreams tomorrow.

41
“There is no traffic jam along the extra mile.”
— Roger Staubach

Going the extra mile to ensure that tasks are done with utmost perfection may not be easy, but it is worth it. Once you begin to go the extra mile to render services, people will turn to you for those services than your colleagues. In other words, you have bought a free ticket into the minds of your clients such that when services like yours are required, you are on their minds.

42
“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”
— Simon Sinek

Money can be a good motivator to get people to work, but it is not the ultimate. Find yourself people who buy into your vision and plans. Those are the people to work best with. This is because they believe what you believe and may be willing to give in their blood to achieve the tasks required, unlike people who are just there for the money.

43
“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”
—Robert Collier

If you’re waiting for a big breakthrough to call success, it’s not bad. Remember that success is an accumulation of small and little wins. These little wins come from the small efforts that are repeated day in and day out.

44
“Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

You don’t benefit from avoiding work or hiding while others are toiling. To get the prize, you need to get busy working while others are working. Doing a job and giving it your best may be exhausting, but when you remember you did it yourself, it’s a pat on the back.

45
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
— Alexander Graham Bell

Give that task your best, your focus, and you all. Success can only be achieved in that task when you're focused and determined to get the task done. Give it your utmost concentration and see wonders begin to happen.

46
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
— C.S. Lewis

Having achieved a particular dream doesn’t call for sleep or reluctance. Dream again; there is no age limit to setting dreams. There's also no age limit to the number of dreams you can have in a lifetime. Keep dreaming and setting goals.

47
“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do — even when it doesn't look like it makes any difference. And they do it long enough for the compounding effect to start to kick in.”
— Jeff Olson

A major difference between successful and unsuccessful people is what they are willing to do and how far they are willing to do it. The tasks and hard work that unsuccessful people run from is what the successful ones take to the maximum height.

Empower yourself and your team to work hard by sharing and meditating on the best hard work quotes. Most times, people become less enthusiastic about working because they are either stressed out or less motivated. These inspirational quotes for work will strengthen and encourage your team to work effectively and efficiently.

48
“Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

You don’t benefit from avoiding work or hiding while others are toiling. To get the prize, you need to get busy working while others are working. Doing a job and giving it your best may be exhausting, but when you remember you did it yourself, it’s a pat on the back.

49
“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

Whatever you can conceive, you can believe and achieve. Imagine fueling your positive thoughts with desire and purpose, the sky will be your starting point, not your limit. Start first by conceiving. Think good thoughts and come up with a dream or goal for yourself.

50
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
— Stephen King

To sit and wait for inspiration before attending to a task is not ideal. Start the task and watch the inspiration to move further come to you. It is all about taking the first step.

51
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
— Beverly Sills

There are nos shortcuts to going to any place worthwhile in life. To achieve that worthwhile dream of yours, stay in the process. Get to work, and take a step towards it each day. Yes, there will be complications and obstacles. Know that those obstacles are there to push you to the next level of win. Remember, success is an accumulation of little wins.

Conclusion

Don’t sit around waiting for the inspiration to get to the task. Or even sit around waiting for the entire resource you need to pursue a goal. Take the first step by putting yourself out there. Climb the first stairs and watch how things will fall in line in due time.

Will there be challenges? Of course, there will be. The best way to shake off those challenges is to focus on the goals. Your focus on the goals gives you the strength to come out unscathed. Remember, challenges are just ladders to cross over to the other side of success. You can only cross when you overcome them. Wear your courage like sleeves; courage is not the absence of fear. After all, this, brace yourself up for success.

These inspirational quotes about work will help develop your inner strength and willpower to keep working and stay on track. Working is not always so pleasant, but it is very crucial if you want to progress in life. Be ready to put in the work.

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Anastasia Belyh

Editor at FounderJar

Anastasia has been a professional blogger and researcher since 2014. She loves to perform in-depth software reviews to help software buyers make informed decisions when choosing project management software, CRM tools, website builders, and everything around growing a startup business.

Anastasia worked in management consulting and tech startups, so she has lots of experience in helping professionals choosing the right business software.