I gathered these inspirational career quotes from some of my favorite thinkers to motivate and support you in digging deep. Your career is much more than a series of jobs. It’s a relationship—the relationship you have with the work you do.
Like any long-term relationship, your career can bring you satisfaction and joy, but not without its ups and downs. What’s important is that you keep doing work that brings you those sparks of satisfaction, especially after the down days. You must find pockets of inspiration to get you motivated again when you lose a client, miss a deadline, or butt heads with your boss.
Career success is about the process of growing into the best version of yourself. It’s not easy, but it is so worth it.
I hope these career quotes help you figure out your next right step, whether that’s making a plan to ask for the flexibility and pay you deserve, reading more books on positive psychology, or just finding a way to participate in a more meaningful project. Here’s to a long and happy career.
Inspirational Career Quotes
The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.
Brené Brown
The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?
Tim Ferriss
The obstacle is the path.
Proverb
The enemy is only a pretext to test our strength.
Paulo Coelho
The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
Frances Willard
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
Gustave Flaubert
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley
You can control two things: your work ethic and your attitude about anything.
Ali Krieger
A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.
Paulo Coelho
There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.
Arthur P. Stanley
Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford
Career Success Quotes
Don’t try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.
Brené Brown
If you desire to do something, there is part of you deep down that knows you’re capable or else you wouldn’t waste your time thinking about it.
Jen Sincero
Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.
Michelle Obama
A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
Tim Ferriss
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
Anne Lamott
Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou
One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.
Arthur Ashe
Someone else’s success is not your failure.
Alexandra Robbins
You will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal. There really is only one, and that is this: To fulfill the highest, most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family, and the people around you.
Oprah Winfrey
Every failure contains powerful data that will point you in the right direction.
Ramit Sethi
Success isn’t about how your life looks to others. It’s about how it feels to you. We realized that being successful isn’t about being impressive, it’s about being inspired. That’s what it means to be true to yourself.
Michelle Obama
Career Growth Quotes
You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.
Yogi Bhajan
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
Tim Ferriss
It is better to begin in the evening than not at all.
Proverb
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty
Maya Angelou
This idea that we’re either courageous or chicken shit is just not true, because most of us are afraid and brave at the exact same moment, all day long.
Brenė Brown
Life is a continual process of arrival into who we are.
Maria Popova
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life; or in the life of another.
Helen Keller
There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others.
Michelle Obama
Best Career Advice Quotes
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain
Love is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Love beats the crap out of fear, hate, jealousy, worry, insecurity, irritation, grouchiness—it’s stronger than all of ‘em.
Jen Sincero
Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
Tim Ferriss
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin
The single most important factor to getting rich is getting started, not being the smartest person in the room.
Ramit Sethi
If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.
Maya Angelou
There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.
Sheryl Sandberg
You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.
Henry Ward Beecher
Pay close attention to when you’re being real and when you’re trying to impress an invisible injury
Derek Sivers
Your own reasons to create are reason enough. Merely by pursuing what you love, you may inadvertently end up helping us plenty.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Career Building Quotes
You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.
Gary Vaynerchuk
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespare
I think I’m teaching my teammates that they can still be successful while having fun and enjoying the moment rather than being a stone-cold brick.
Simone Biles
Self-trust, we know, is the first secret of success.
Lady Wilde
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffet
Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.
Sheryl Sandberg
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
Maya Angelou
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
George Elliot
Curiosity is one of those insatiable passions that grow by gratification.
Sarah Scott
Career Motto Examples
When they go low, we go high.
Michelle Obama
Everything is hard before it is easy.
Johann von Goethe
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
Seneca
Leadership belongs to those who take it.
Sheryl Sandberg
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
Arianna Huffington
