
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.
- "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." --Aristotle
- "Take risks and you'll get the payoffs. Learn from your mistakes until you succeed. It's that simple." --Bobby Flay
- "The best way out is always through." --Robert Frost
- "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." --Wayne Gretzky
- "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." --Samuel Johnson
- "Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark." --David Ogilvy
Feb 5, 2015