120 Best Inspirational Quotes

Entrepreneurship can be a challenging and rewarding journey, and sometimes a little inspiration can go a long way. Here are 120 of the best inspirational quotes about entrepreneurship and leadership:

1. “Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.” – Paulo Coelho
2. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”. –Thomas Edison
3. “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
4. “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
5. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”
   – Sara Blakely
6. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln
7. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean
8. “If you’re not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
9. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
10. “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” – Will Rogers
11. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
12. “The biggest challenge in business is not competition, but rather communication.” – Richard Branson
13. A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. —Lao Tzu
14. Where there is no vision, the people perish. —Proverbs 29:18
15. I must follow the people. Am I not their leader? —Benjamin Disraeli
16. You manage things; you lead people. —Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
17. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. —Max DePree
18. “Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.” – Simon Sinek
19. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. —Warren Bennis
20. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. — General George Patton
21. 8. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. —Jack Welch
22. You are never too small to make a difference. —Greta Thunberg
23. A leader is a dealer in hope. —Napoleon Bonaparte
24. You don’t need a title to be a leader. –Multiple Attributions
25. “Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.”—Nelson Mandela
26. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. —John Maxwell
27. My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. —General Montgomery
28. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. —Peter Drucker
29. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. —Margaret Mead
30. Education is the mother of leadership. —Wendell Willkie
31. Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. —Stephen Covey
32. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. —General Colin Powell
33. Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths. —John Zenger
34. He who has great power should use it lightly. —Seneca
35. 56. He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. —Solon
36. I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be. —Warren Bennis
37. Leadership is hard to define, and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.
    – Indra Nooyi
38. I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody. —Herbert Swope
39. If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. —Maya Angelou
40. If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. —Benjamin Franklin
41. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. —John Quincy Adams
42. “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”—Nelson Mandela
43. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. —Thomas Jefferson
44. It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. —Latin Proverb
45. It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership. —Nelson Mandela
46. Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led. —Ross Perot
47. Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. —Vince Lombardi
48. Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. —John C. Maxwell
49. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. —John F. Kennedy
50. Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day. —Jesse Jackson
51. We need to accept that we don’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes. Understand that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.
    – Arianna Huffington
52. Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. —Woodrow Wilson
53. Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. —Norman Schwarzkopf
54. Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. —Colin Powell
55. Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts. —Erskine Bowles
56. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. —Bill Bradley
57. Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. —Tom Peters
58. Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. —Stephen Covey
59. One of the criticisms I’ve faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, it means I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.
    – Jacinda Ardern
60. Never give an order that can’t be obeyed. —General Douglas MacArthur
61. No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. —Abraham Lincoln
62. What you do has far greater impact than what you say. —Stephen Covey
63. Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow. —Chinese Proverb
64. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. —Arnold Glasow
65. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on. —Walter Lippman
66. “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”—Nelson Mandela
67. The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. —Ken Blanchard
68. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. —Harvey Firestone
69. To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. —Friedrich Nietzsche
70. To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way. —Pat Riley
71. True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. —Bill Owens
72. hatever you are, be a good one. —Abraham Lincoln
73. 90. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. —Eleanor Roosevelt
74. 91. A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops. —John J Pershing
75. 92. A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. —John Maxwell
76. 93. There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity and courage. —Fuchan Yuan
77. 94. I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t. —Dee Dee Myers
78. 95. A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men. —Stephen King
79. My responsibility is getting all my players playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back. –Unknown
80. “I am fundamentally an optimist. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”—Nelson Mandela
81. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. –George Patton
82. The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. –Dwight Eisenhower
83. You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership. –Dwight Eisenhower
84. Earn your leadership every day. –Michael Jordan
85. The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground. —Sir Winston Churchill
86. The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. —Warren Bennis
87. To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. —Andre Malraux
88. He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. —Aristotle
89. Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position. —Brian Tracy
90. I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. —Ralph Nader
91. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. —Peter Drucker
92. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. —Publilius Syrus
93. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
94. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt
95. Leadership is influence. —John C. Maxwell
96. You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. —Ken Kesey
97. When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out. —Napoleon Bonaparte
98. Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. —Harry S. Truman
99. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”—Nelson Mandela
100. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. —John Maxwell
101. So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. —Peter Drucker
102. The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. —Tony Blair
103. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. —Reverend Theodore Hesburgh
104. The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. —Kenneth Blanchard
105. A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible. —Polybius
106. A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position. —John Maxwell
107. A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be. —Rosalynn Carter
108. The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. —Jim Rohn
109. Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. —Sam Walton
110. A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. —Douglas MacArthur
111. A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward. —Ovid
112. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. —Andrew Carnegie
113. Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. —General Dwight Eisenhower
114. The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. —Eric Hoffer
115. Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. —Brian Tracy
116. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. —Max Lucado
117. Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. —General George Patton
118. As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. -Bill Gates
119. All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. —John Kenneth Galbraith
120. Do what you feel in your heart to be right–for you’ll be criticized anyway. —Eleanor Roosevelt

These quotes can serve as a source of inspiration and motivation for entrepreneurs, as they remind them to stay focused, to keep pushing through challenges, and to never give up on their dreams.