70 Quotes About Hard Work That’ll Inspire You to Reach Your Goals

Women‍‍`s Corner
March 17, 2023

Success doesn’t come easy — even the most dedicated entrepreneur sometimes finds it tough to stay on track. To keep your eyes on the prize, learn from 70 top hard work quotes. Allow the words of those who have gone before us to motivate you and keep you focused. Learn from others who have walked the same path and share in their hard-fought lessons.

1. "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard." — Tim Notke, basketball coach

2. "Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable." — Coco Chanel, fashion designer

3. "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." — Maya Angelou, American poet, and civil rights activist

4. "If your teacher, coach, or mentor believes you can do something, you’re more likely to do it." — Gwen Moran, FastCompany

5. "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, Brazilian soccer player

6. "People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it." — George Bernard Shaw, playwright

7. "I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near." — Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister

8. "You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself." — Alan Alda, actor

9. "I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday." — Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the U.S.

10. "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, author

11. "Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us." — Susan L. Taylor, journalist

12. "Sometimes, you have to give up. Sometimes, knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop." — Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike

13. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." — Isaac Newton, mathematician, physicist, and author

14. "The only thing standing between you and outrageous success is continuous progress." — Dan Waldschmidt, business strategist

15. "I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." — Thomas Jefferson, American Founding Father

16. "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." — Steve Jobs, co-Founder of Apple Inc.

17. "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." —Tony Robbins, American author, and speaker

18. "On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a millionaire." — Larry D. Turner

19. "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."— Stephen King, author

20. "Impossible is just an opinion." — Paulo Coelho, Brazilian lyricist, and novelist

21. "Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig." — Malcolm Gladwell, journalist, speaker, and author

22. "He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life." — Muhammad Ali, Black professional boxer and activist

23. "There are no traffic jams on the extra mile." — Zig Ziglar, author, and motivational speaker

24. "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." — Walt Disney, founder of Walt Disney World

25. "The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it." ― Epicurus, Greek philosopher

26. "You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training." — Tom Hopkins, sales leader

27. "There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits." — Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer

28. "I can say the willingness to get dirty has always defined us as a nation, and it's a hallmark of hard work and a hallmark of fun, and dirt is not the enemy." — Mike Rowe, actor, and producer

29. "It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up." — Babe Ruth, former professional baseball player

30. "Do or do not. There is no try." — Yoda

31. "Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." — Oprah Winfrey, media mogul

32. "I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." — Michael Jordan, Black professional basketball player

33. "There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights." — Madam C.J. Walker, Black entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist

34. "If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it." — Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX

35. "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." — Muhammad Ali, Black professional boxer and activist

36. "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. If we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." — Josh Billings, humorist

37. "We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success." — Arianna Huffington, author, and co-founder of The Huffington Post

38. "Obstacles can't stop you. Problems can't stop you. Most of all, other people can't stop you. Only you can stop you." — Jeffrey Gitomer, author, speaker, and business trainer

39. "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." — Charles R. Swindoll, author and educator

40. "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." — Thomas Edison, inventor

41. "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." — Arthur Ashe, tennis player

42. "Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations." — Dr. Mae Jemison, first Black female astronaut

43. "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." — Dale Carnegie, author, and lecturer

44. "You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day." — Marian Wright Edelman, Black activist for children's rights

45. "Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come." — Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, actor

46."The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." — Thomas Paine, American Founding Father

47. "Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." — Winston S. Churchill, former Prime Minister

48. "When you do more than you’ paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do." — Zig Ziglar, author and motivational speaker

49. "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." — Vidal Sassoon, hairdressing business tycoon

50. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, `Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." — Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Baptist minister and activist

51. "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." — Dale Carnegie, author and lecturer

52. "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." — Colin Powell, first Black Secretary of State

53. "If you start thinking you are good at something, that's often the day you stop trying to be better and open the back door for someone to come after you. That's why we always aim higher. We never feel like we're done." — Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox

54. "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." — Booker T. Washington, Black author and educator

55. "He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." — Nietzsche, philosopher

56. "Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other." — Walter Elliot, British politician

57. "A bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn." — Helen Keller, author, disability rights advocate, political activist

58. "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." — Michelangelo, sculptor and painter

59. "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." — Robert Collier, author

60. "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." — Albert Einstein, physicist

61. "As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better." — Dr. Steve Maraboli, author and public speaker

62. "Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." — F. Scott Fitzgerald, author

63. “If you're in a job that you hate, don't be scared of seeking out something that might be riskier. Anything can turn into something with passion and hard work.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble

64. “Don't run before you can crawl. It's a very hard business, full of many, many extremely creative, talented people who work hard and still fail. If you have the basic building blocks behind you, you're much more likely to do well.” — Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue

65. “It’s so freeing, it’s beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there’s nowhere to go but up.” — David Lynch, co-creater of Twin Peaks

66. “If you are patient...and wait long enough...Nothing will happen” — Jim Davis creator of Garfield

67. "Without labor, nothing prospers." — Sophocles

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68. "Great companies are built in the office, with hard work put in by a team." — Emily Chang

69. "If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you – like a fever. " — Sam Walton

70. "The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action." — Alexander Graham Bell