Great businesses aren’t built on luck, they are built on bold ideas, relentless execution, and the wisdom of those who’ve dared to lead. Learning from those who’ve walked the path before can keep you going.
- “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
- “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
- “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
- “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb (popularized by Al Gore)
- “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John C. Maxwell
- “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” – Henry Ford
- “The role of leadership is to transform the complex into the simple.” – Warren Bennis
- “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
- “The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” – Mark Zuckerberg
- “Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.” – Richard Branson
- “Disruption is about bringing simplicity to complexity.” – Whitney Johnson
- “Move fast and break things.” – Mark Zuckerberg
- “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” – Theodore Levitt
- “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffett
- “You can’t be everything to everyone, but you can be something great for someone.” – Arielle Jackson
- “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” – Michael Porter
- “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
- “What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker
- “Don’t boil the ocean.” – Anonymous business maxim
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
- “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
- “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
- “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston (Dropbox)
- “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz
- “If you’re not a little embarrassed by your first product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman
- “You can’t scale chaos. You can only scale a system.” – James Clear
- “Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.” – James Cash Penney
- “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates
- “Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.” – Tony Hsieh
- “Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.” – Richard Branson
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
- “Every problem is a gift—without problems we would not grow.” – Tony Robbins
- “Being an entrepreneur is about being a problem solver.” – Elon Musk
- “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.” – Reid Hoffman
- “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” – Guy Kawasaki
- “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.” – Elon Musk
- “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs
- “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn
- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky / Michael Scott (by extension)
- “Hire character. Train skill.” – Peter Schutz
- “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker
- “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” – Richard Branson
- “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson
- “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos
- “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett
- “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
- “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” – Andy Warhol
- “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” – Warren Buffett
- “Your most valuable asset isn’t your product. It’s your customer.” – Dharmesh Shah
- “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” – Jack Dorsey
- “If you don’t genuinely care about your customers, chances are they won’t care about you.” – Tom Watson
- “The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie
- “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci (adopted by Apple)
- “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.” – Anthony Volodkin
- “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” – Muhammad Ali
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.” – Jim Rohn
- “Great companies start because the founders want to change the world… not make a fast buck.” – Guy Kawasaki
- “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” – Adam Osborne
- “Play long-term games with long-term people.” – Naval Ravikant
- “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman
- “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
- “If something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
- “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” – Scott Belsky
- “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” – Biz Stone
- “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin
- “Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.” – Brian Chesky
- “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
- “Dream big. Start small. Act now.” – Robin Sharma
- “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
- “High expectations are the key to everything.” – Sam Walton
- “Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.” – Sam Walton
- “We’re all working together; that’s the secret.” – Sam Walton
- “Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.” – Sam Walton
- “Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.” – Sam Walton
- “Most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from somebody else.” – Sam Walton
- “Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.” – Sam Walton
- “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.” – Sam Walton
- “Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise.” – Sam Walton
- “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” – Ray Kroc
- “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc
- “The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.” – Ray Kroc
- “When you’re green, you’re growing. When you’re ripe, you rot.” – Ray Kroc
- “None of us is as good as all of us.” – Ray Kroc
- “Play by the rules, but be ferocious.” – Phil Knight
- “There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.” – Phil Knight
- “Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where ‘there’ is.” – Phil Knight
- “When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.” – Phil Knight
- “Belief is irresistible.” – Phil Knight
These quotes reflect the real lessons learned through failure, risk, strategy, and triumph. Let them be your compass in the dynamic journey of business. They’ve walked the path so you don’t have to walk it blind.
