33+ Inspirational Quotes for Work [Images & FREE eBook]

09 Nov 33+ Inspirational Quotes for Work [Images & FREE eBook]

Posted at 07:52h in inspirational, work by Brian

Trying to stay motivated on the job? We’ve got inspirational quotes for work to help get you through the work week!

Whether you’re a business owner, employee, or visionary like Steve Jobs, it takes mental strength and focus to get through the work day. If you’re lucky then you might have some great friends in the office that can help you stay motivated. However, most of us will likely have to endure the stress of work alone. Here are some of our favorite quotes to keep you inspired throughout your workday.

Motivational Sayings for the Workplace

Staying motivated at work can be difficult if you don’t get along with your coworkers or dislike your work. With the wrong outlook on work, you’ll be forced to suffer 5 days a week while you wait for the weekend. Why spend a majority of your week in pain? Try to move towards work and people that are compatible with your views and values.

1. Follow your passion

“Your work is going to 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. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” – Steve Jobs

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time of the subject of finding your life’s work. The only way to become truly great at something is to have the talent, passion, and commitment to pursue your dreams. Settling is often a terrible choice that not only makes you unhappy but will also likely lead you to doing a terrible job. Look for your passion, and once you find it, wake up every morning with the determination and work hard to make it a viable reality.

2. Take some risk in your career

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

You gotta take a chance from time to time if you want to innovate or get ahead at work. Work hard to earn some trust with your boss or manager so that when you propose a bold or risky plan that it has a better chance of being approved. Great companies are often willing to take many risk and experiment, such as Google who has set up a department just for trying new and fringe projects, to grow and innovate.

3. Work doesn’t have to feel like work

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Seth Godin

We honestly spend 8-12 hours at work everyday if you account for lunch and traffic. It’s a significant amount of time in our lives to dedicate to anything. Make sure that if you’re going to spend that much amount of time doing something that it is enjoyable and worthwhile to you. I don’t believe it’s healthy or logical to suffer at your job for the majority of your day to hopefully “buy” happiness at a later date. Sometimes having peace of mind and health is more valuable than just money or financial gain.

4. Appreciate hard work and meaningful work

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

The feeling of “flow” when you’re in the zone and doing great work is amazing. Many people consider it very similar to a runner’s high where you feel very fluid, euphoric, and in tune with the world. Finding your passion and making it a sustainable living is a wonderful goal to go after. Remember that hard work can be enjoyable and doesn’t have to mean suffering or enduring tough times.

5. Get your mind right and succeed in the workplace

“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 mindset is everything. Someone that is very successful financially and career-wise can be absolutely miserable inside. On the flip-side, someone who is just getting by but very content with their work can be much happier and more “successful” in my opinion. In terms of actually work and success, what we think can often be a self fulfilling prophecy and we can doom ourselves from the start by thinking that we’re going to fail or not do well before even starting.

6. Prioritize your work properly

“If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Many of work’s efficiencies depend on how well you prioritize your tasks. Doing work out of order can often lead to much wasted time and headache for the both yourself and your team. Find the core issues and bottlenecks that are holding your projects up and go after them relentlessly. You can really help yourself by making a to-do list or using a good to-do list app such as Google Keep to help you stay organized.

7. Hard work leads to success

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pele

Rarely do people stumble over success. If you think about it, even lottery winners that stumble over a large financial gain often go broke soon after. Success can only be achieved when you earn it through hard work, endurance, and much sacrifice. Even if you did get ahead or lucky in landing a high position, it likely wouldn’t mean much to you or make you feel “successful” unless you felt that you deserve it.

8. Determination can determine your job status

“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” – Colin Powell

There’s a lot of dreamers out there but sadly a lot less hard workers. Your dream and your vision should be your guide to where you ultimately want to end up. Hard work and endurance through a tough journey, however, is what will actually take you to your goals.

9. Find a career you love

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius

Find work that you’re passionate about. Life is too short to waste most of your day working on something you don’t really care about. You’ll be a much happier person, and in-turn, a most likely more successful person both career-wise and financially if you do something that you love. Find your “fun”, and you’ll never dread another day at work.

10. Find the beauty in your work

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi

Make your passion your life. It’s definitely easier said than done, but with the advent of the internet it seems easier than ever for people to follow their dreams. If you want to be a writer, you can now sell and promote directly to your audience and readers. If you want to make music and perform you can do it through a website, Spotify, Youtube, or many other channels that will allow you to reach your listeners without going through a traditional label. The possibility to follow your dreams and make a sustainable living from it has never been this viable.

11. Try and try again until you succeed at work

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

If you’re looking to make changes or innovate, then you’re bound to fail along the way. Elon Musk and SpaceX blew up plenty of spaceships before they were able to successfully land one, and those guys are some of the smartest people on earth right now. Understand that your failures are just a part of your journey towards success. With that in mind, please try to be emphatic to your coworkers when they’re projects don’t go well and need you to keep their spirits up.

12. Hold yourself responsible in the workplace

“At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren’t where you want to be, you will always be a failure.” – Erin Cummings

While we don’t control many parts of our lives including where we were born, what parents and siblings we have, and what financial and economic climates we started with, we are in full control of our decisions. By taking responsibility for both our successes and our failures, we’re able to have a sense of control and a better ability to make decisions. Accepting that failures are your responsibility will also allow you to take better notes of your mistakes and shortcomings so that you can adjust and learn properly for future projects.

13. Find joy in your work

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” – Aristotle

Loving what you do day in and day out will ultimately reflect in the final results of your work. There’s rarely any cases in history where someone has hated their job and ended up creating anything worthwhile. Amazing work often takes a lot of sacrifice and suffering in order to finish, such as road bumps in planning or managerial disagreements, so it does often take love for your work that will help you push through these tough times.

14. Have faith that hard work brings great results

“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.” – Conan O’Brien

A great quote from one of my favorite celebrities. He’s not only brought us the late night show but was also a writer for the Simpsons during the good years. This is a simple quote about work that I think rings very true. Try your best and be nice to both your employees and customers and you’ll be sure to prosper.

15. Nothing can replace effort

“There is no substitute for hard work.” – Thomas A. Edison

It doesn’t really matter how talented or smart you are, without hard work and self discipline, you’re unlikely to do much good. I’ve seen some of the smartest people waste away their talents by being lazy and becoming a permanent fixture on their couch. Having talent and good ideas are just one part of the equation to success. Hard work and determination is likely the bigger part of the equation to success that most people don’t want to accept or realize. Keep in mind that Tom Brady wasn’t drafted very high and came in the NFL as a backup for many years before his skills and hard work were given the opportunity to be displayed and appreciated.

16. Earn your keep

“The fruit of your own hard work is the sweetest.” – Deepika Padukone

We definitely appreciate things more when we feel we’ve earn them. I feel it’s sad in many ways when people are born into rich families or have many luxuries given to them because they don’t get the opportunity to fully enjoy them. It’s a paradox that the reason most of us enjoy weekends and vacation time so much is because we have so much work during the week. Without work, our weekends would be less meaningful and blend in with the rest of our days.

17. Anyone can succeed with enough determination

“The American Dream is that any man or woman, despite of his or her background, can change their circumstances and rise as high as they are willing to work.” – Fabrizio Moreira

Many of us are so lucky to be in America. We’re even luckier with the creation of the internet which let’s us pretty much do whatever we want and be able to turn it into a viable lifestyle. Be grateful that we have the freedom to work where we want, and pursue the career or position that we have a passion for. It’s definitely a luxury that often other countries cannot afford since they are forced into one type of work or another.

18. Do good work for yourself

“Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.” – Robin S. Sharma

You’re ego is usually holding you back. It makes you afraid of failure and limits you from truly innovating at your job and taking calculated risks. In many ways, your ego will also make you unhappy as you seek approval from your colleagues and superiors. Do good work for yourself and your internal standards.

19. Preparation is key to success

“The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.” – Elbert Hubbard

Success is a habit and our skills are something that we sharpen on a daily basis. Who we ultimately are is the result of what we do each day. For everyday that we do bad work and lazy work we are digging ourselves into a tunnel of mediocrity. For everyday that we do excellent work, we sharpen our skills and continue our path towards improvement and success.

20. Great leaders inspire their followers

“When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” – Lao Tzu

Not all bosses are good at their job. The ones that truly respect their employees and help them both find success as well as credit them for success should be highly praised. I believe a good manager or leader will help those around them become successful and will work hard to build their self esteem.

Short Inspirational Quotes about Work

Use these sayings for quick bursts of inspiration throughout the workday. You’ll need to keep a good mindset because having a negative view can affect both your performance and happiness. Here are some short motivational quotes about work to draw strength from.

21. “There is no substitute for hard work. Never give up. Never stop believing. Never stop fighting.” – Hope Hicks

22. “Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.” – Robert Half

23. “Glory is attained from hard work, step by step.” – Ma Long

24. “Success is a journey, not a destination.” – Proverb/Unknown

25. “Don’t be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again” – Richard Branson

26. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates

27. “You never fail until you stop trying.” – Albert Einstein

28. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

29. “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” – Muhammad Ali

30. “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.” – John F Kennedy

31. “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.” – Anonymous

32. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

33. “Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.” – Robert H. Schuller

Download FREE Inspirational Quotes for Work eBook (No Sign-up Needed)

Get printable, high resolution PDF download
20+ pages of handwritten quotes & beautiful images
Use these sayings to stay positive at work and spread enthusiasm to your coworkers

Stay motivated at work

As you work your way through the work week, we hope that these insights and quotes about work will help inspire and motivate you. Keep your spirits high and let your enthusiasm spread among your coworkers. Remember that hard work and a job doesn’t have to mean terrible tasks and hours of suffering.

I hope you can have an awesome work week,

Print page