80+ Motivational Business Quotes

Running your own business or organization is challenging on the best of days. Having a ready store of quotes to motivate and uplift or provide food for thought is as important as a social media content plan or your accountant on speed dial. 

Even better, once you’ve discovered some inspiring quotes, you can boost your influence and reinforce brand messages with customers, peers and community by sharing your quotes. We see quotes visualized on social media every day. With the right graphics program, you can create an eye-catching quote to share in less than 10 minutes. 

For this article, we’ve curated dozens of powerful quotes – from business leaders, yes, but also activists, professors, artists, writers, research scientists and even a U.S. President. We steered away from rah-rah or overused quotes to discover impactful words that discuss how to fire up your creativity and innovative spirit, ignite your originality, encourage strategic thinking, improve teamwork, promote enduring motivation and productivity, and upgrade your leadership philosophy. 

Along the way, we’ll show you how we’ve used Piktochart tools such as the AI Quote Generator and our Social Media Post Generator to visualize selected quotes. 

Enjoy! 

To make our quote collection more friendly, we’ve categorized them by their relationship to your life as a business owner. 

1. “Creation is an act. Action takes energy.” – Ursula K. LeGuin, novelist

2. “If you’re not taking risks, and everything you do is reasonable and sensible, how creative do you really think you are?” – Scott Burkun, author and innovation expert

3. “If I am not creating, then maybe it means I am not supposed to at that moment. … sometimes it just means that I need to quiet my mind and wait for the idea to emerge.” – Melanie Sklarz, artist and marketing strategist

4. “Many creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.” – Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Hungarian-American psychologist

5. “I don’t think training is required to be an artist … The most important thing is to step out of the way and keep showing up to practice.” – Christine Valters Paintner, Benedictine oblate and author of 20 books on creative practice

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(This and the other quote visualizations in this article took an average of 5 clicks and 4 minutes to make using Piktochart’s AI Quote Generator. Try turning a quote into a great looking visual for free today!)

7. “Just like with food, curiosity can be either nourishing or junk. And just like with food, we can design our environment to encourage the right kind of curiosity.” – Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author and neuroscientist

8. “Creative ideas don’t live at your desk … Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with new ideas when you’re following the same routines.” – Dan Bailey, adventure photographer

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10. “A mindset of curiosity towards multiple perspectives is more likely to trigger insights and inspire innovation.” – Frank J. Barrett, professor of organizational behavior and jazz pianist

11. “Forget about creating a routine. You have to focus on finding your rhythm. … With rhythm you can skip a beat and still get back in the groove.” – K.C. Davis, therapist and author

12. “If you are too big, then it’s a reflection that the place you’re in is too small for you.” – Luvvie Ajayi Jones, author and speaker

13. “Change calls out for all of us to lead from wherever we might be and in whatever form is true to who we are.” – Alex Budak, social entrepreneur

14. ““It’s only in the unconventional places that you’ll find the connections — and ultimately the targets — that no one else can see.” – Orzan Varol, astrophysicist, law professor and author

15. “In order for you to live a remarkable life — in order for you to live a life that is fulfilling — you need to be able to go after what you want.” – Debbie Millman, designer, podcaster and author

16. “Failure itself doesn’t limit dreaming and personal innovation — shame does.” – Whitney Johnson, CEO, Disruption Advisors

17. “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.” – Chris Guillebeau, author, entrepreneur, and traveler

18.

19. “Almost everything important that’s ever happened was unimaginable shortly before it happened.” – Jane McGonigal, author, game designer and researcher

20. “Most people are in fact quite capable of novel thinking and problem solving, if only their organizations would stop pounding them into conformity.” – Adam Grant, author and professor of organizational psychology

21.

22. “Disruption does not guarantee success, but it sure helps.” – Clayton Christensen, business professor and consultant

23. “Obsession can be a useful tool if it’s positive obsession. Using it is like aiming carefully in archery.” – Octavia Butler, science-fiction novelist

24. “Strategic thinking in business must break out of the limited scope of vision that entraps deer on the highway. – Kenichi Ohmae, author, The Mind Of The Strategist

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26. “Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.” – Richard Rumelt

27. “The heart of strategy is the answer to two fundamental questions: where will you play, and how will you win there?” – A.G. Lafley, author, Playing To WIn: How Strategy Really Works

28. “Today’s problems were most likely yesterday’s solutions.” – David Peter Stroh, social change consultant

29. “Scenario planning is a tool for telling stories about the future.” – Ellen Lupton, designer and author of Design Is Storytelling

30. “Psychological safety is what enables team members to believe they can speak up, admit mistakes, ask questions, offer a dissenting opinion, seek feedback and be themselves.” – Scott Tanennbaum, co-author, Teams That Work

31. “Genuine relationships — understanding people’s motivations, challenges, and goals — create magic.” – Pascal Potvin, User experience design leader

32. 

33. “Community is what happens when you do what you love together.” – Pete Davis, filmmaker

34. “The values that dominate an organization will displace other competing, lesser values.” – Robert Fritz, author, The Path of Least Resistance For Managers

35. “The very best working groups include team members who are familiar with the technical, legal, or financial opportunities and limits, and people who will use the experience.” – Torrey Podmajersky, user experience writer

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37. “People like working on projects that are going to make a difference in people’s lives, no matter how small the consequence.” – Dan M. Brown

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39. “When you’re in the presence of something vast and indescribable, it’s hard to maintain the view that you—and the voice in your head—are the center of the world.” – Scott Tannenbaum, neuroscientist and author of Chatter

40.  “In order to enhance your creativity … and live your best life, you need to take your focus away from extrinsic rewards–such as money, prestige, and so on–and, instead, place your focus on intrinsic rewards.” – Marelisa Fabrega, lawyer and entrepreneur

41. 

42. “We can hope and pray that nothing goes wrong, but it can and will, sometimes in droves. What we can develop is an approach to challenges that keeps our internal flame of hope and inspiration alive.” – Pamela Slim, author and business coach

43. “Motivation isn’t something you have. Motivation is something you get, from yourself, automatically, from feeling good about achieving small successes” – Jeff Hayden, author, The Motivation Myth

44. “The meaning that we see in work resides in the responses of the people for whom we are doing the work.” – Steve Denning, management thought leader

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46.” If there is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.” – Kelly McGonigle, health psychologist

47. “It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” – Ira Glass, radio and podcast producer

48. “”In every difficult situation is potential value. Believe this; then begin looking for it.” – Norman Vincent Peale, minister and author

49. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States

50. “You can’t ‘motivate’ anybody else. You can show them the target, smooth the way and cheer them along. But motivation is something you draw out rather than put in.” – Mark McGuinness, creativity coach and podcaster

51. 

52. “Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy.” – Dan Harris, broadcaster and author of 10 Percent Happier

53. “Facing reality is an empowering act – it can liberate our mind and heart to discern how best to use our power and influence in service for this time.” – Margaret J. Wheatley, leadership and social change consultant

54. “Getting altitude means giving yourself permission.” – Liz Ryan, careers expert

55. “Sometimes the best way to win is to help others succeed.” – Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing author

56. “Run after your obsessions with everything you have. Just be sure to take notes along the way.” – Tiago Forte, author, Building A Second Brain

57. “The best way to protect ourselves from uncertainty is to work to develop skills and knowledge and connections that we didn’t even know we needed.” – Dorie Clark, author and executive education professor

58. “If your goal is to build a remarkable life, then busyness and exhaustion should be your enemy. If you’re chronically stressed and up late working, you’re doing something wrong.” – Dave Kanigan, Canadian-American businessman

59. “People that I know, the vast majority, who are successful work really, really hard.” – Will Packer, film and television producer

60. “Compelling careers are not courageously pursued or serendipitously discovered, but are instead systematically crafted.” – Cal Newport, author of Slow Productivity

61. “Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it.” – Angela Duckworth, psychologist and popular science author

62. “You need to eliminate first. You need to be a productivity minimalist in order to be a success.” – James Altucher, author and serial entrepreneur

63. “Part of the critical choices that people need to make to become more productive is to ask themselves, ‘What does productivity actually mean to me?’” – Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

64. “Laziness, lack of discipline, etc., are symptoms of a deeper problem: disempowerment. Locate and remedy the sources of disempowerment in your life and work and you can reclaim your joyful productivity.” – Hillary Rettig, productivity thought leader and social activist

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66. “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” – Lao Tzu, author of The Tao Te Ching

67.

68. “You have to find some measure of community support. This will make it easier and more fun to do the work, and, crucially, it will make the work better.” – Mason Currey, author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work 

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70. “As a new leader, you can’t rely on most of the things that got you that promotion into leadership in the first place.”- William Gentry, leadership researcher and organizational psychologist

71. “There can be no bad leadership without bad followership. Similarly, bad leadership can be stopped ONLY by good followership. Good followers stop or at least they slow bad leaders.” – Barbara Kellerman, professor and co-founder of the International Leadership Association

72. “The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.” – Fred Edward Fiedler and Martin Chemers, co-authors of Improving Leadership Effectiveness

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74. “The great leaders are like the best conductors — they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.” – Blaine Lee, author, The Power Principle

75. “Leadership is distributed. It resides not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at every level who, in one way or another, acts as a leader to a group of followers.” – Daniel Goleman, co-author of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

76. “Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.” – Jeff Flake, former U.S. Senator for Arizona

77. “We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.” – Donella Meadows, author of Thinking In Systems: A Primer

78. “We value task accomplishment over relationship building and either are not aware of this cultural bias or, worse, don’t care and don’t want to be bothered with it.” – Edgar Schein, author of Humble Inquiry

79. “Actually putting your people first and treating them as if they matter to the organization’s success, although easy to talk about and easy to understand, is notoriously difficult to implement.” – Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of The Knowing-Doing Gap

80. 

81. “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

82. “Great leaders are people who don’t seek power but take responsibility because they have the capability and empathy to help others.” – Theodora Lai, founder and partner, Moringa Ventures

Graphic visualization tools such as those offered by Piktochart allow you to do more than just savor a good quote. You can expand your thought leadership – which is an important component of communicating in presentations, whether as a speaker or on social media – by using Piktochart’s AI platform. 

Sharing visualized quotes can shape your brand messaging and identify you as a thoughtful, well-read leader. Who knows? Perhaps someday YOU will be the leader quoted!