The Ultimate List of Inspirational Quotes for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is exploration.

You chart a course into the unknown, learning as you go.

In this post, I'll share a curated list of inspirational quotes to help you on your journey.

Accepting failure.

• "The only people who never fail are those who never try." --Ilka Chase
• "Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right." --Marian Wright Edelman
• "I failed my way to success." --Thomas Edison
• "Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success." --Napoleon Hill
• "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." --John F. Kennedy
• "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." --Theodore Roosevelt

Dreaming big.

• "Imagination is more important than knowledge." --Albert Einstein
• "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." --Langston Hughes
• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." --Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." --Henry David Thoreau
• "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." --Mark Twain
• "Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer." --Marcia Wieder

Facing your fear.

• "I never think of the future--it comes soon enough." --Albert Einstein
• "Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: Spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight." --Benjamin Franklin
• "Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in." --Andrew Jackson
• "The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable." --Seneca
• "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." --Henry David Thoreau

Leadership.

• "The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes." --Tony Blair
• "A leader is a dealer in hope." --Napoleon Bonaparte
• "While a good leader sustains momentum, a great leader increases it." --John C. Maxwell
• "A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him." --General Douglas MacArthur
• "To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult." --Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise." --Woodrow Wilson

Making the journey.

• "Business opportunities are like buses--there's always another one coming." --Richard Branson
• "I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward." --Charlotte Bronte
• "The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be." --Horace Bushnell
• "Every artist was first an amateur." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all of the time." --Anna Freud
• "We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough." --Helen Keller

Personal growth.

• "Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves." --E. Joseph Cossman
• "Insist on yourself. Never imitate." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes." --Carl Jung
• "It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." --Agnes Repplier
• "The only journey is the one within." --Rainer Maria Rilke
• "Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong." --William Thackeray

Seeking happiness.

• "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly." --Marcus Aurelius
• "Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." --Benjamin Disraeli
• "Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances." --Benjamin Franklin
• "There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something." --Henry Ford
• "Happiness is not a goal, but a by-product." --Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." --Margaret Lee Runbeck

Seeking significance.

• "Purpose is what gives life a meaning." --C. H. Parkhurst
• "The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain." --Kahlil Gibran
• "In all things that you do, consider the end." --Solon
• "Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives." --Viktor Frankl
• "The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize." --Richard Monckton Milnes
• "To reach a port, we must sail--sail, not tie at anchor--sail, not drift." --Franklin Roosevelt

Seeking success.

• "Success is the child of audacity." --Benjamin Disraeli
• "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will." --Vince Lombardi
• "The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." --Aristotle Onassis
• "The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed." --Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is: Try to please everybody." --Herbert Bayard Swope
• "Careful thinking and hard work will solve nearly all your problems. Try and see for yourself." --Ullery

Seeking wisdom.

• "Years teach us more than books." --Berthold Auerbach
• "The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom." --Thomas Huxley
• "The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook." --William James
• "The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends and family, in one's backyard." --Abraham Maslow
• "A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own." --Latin proverb
• "No man was ever wise by chance." --Seneca

Setting goals.

• "In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success." --Victor Cousins
• "Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." --John Dewey
• "A goal is a dream with a deadline." --Napoleon Hill
• "Most 'impossible' goals can be met simply by breaking them down into bite-size chunks, writing them down, believing them, and then going full speed ahead as if they were routine." --Don Lancaster
• "Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement." --Brian Tracy

My top 6.