45 quotes about business to inspire growth and greatness

The right words can fuel your next big move, whether you're launching a startup or leading a team. We’ve curated 45 authentic, attributed quotes about business that go beyond cliches. These are real words from real leaders, designed to spark fresh thinking, perseverance, and maybe even your next breakthrough.

To make this easier to navigate, we’ve grouped the quotes into helpful themes: Leadership, innovation, grit, success, ethics, and vision. Let’s dive in.

Leadership

1. “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” — Ralph Nader

2. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

3. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs

4. “Earn your leadership every day.” — Michael Jordan

5. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

6. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily.” — Brian Tracy

7. “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” — Ronald Reagan

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Innovation and creativity

1. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay

2. “Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” — Guy Kawasaki

3. “Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement.” — William Pollard

4. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” — Theodore Levitt

5. “The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation.” — Bob Iger

6. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” — Drew Houston

Grit and perseverance

1. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

2. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder

3. “The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” — Walt Disney

4. “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” — Will Rogers

5. “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb

6. “If you're going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

7. “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Defining success

1. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” — Maya Angelou

2. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau

3. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” — Colin Powell

4. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill

5. “Opportunities don't happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser

6. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” — Albert Einstein

Business values and ethics

1. “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy.” — Warren Buffett

2. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” — Henry Ford

3. “You don’t build a business, you build people—and then people build the business.” — Zig Ziglar

4. “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” — Peter Drucker

5. “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” — Richard Branson

6. “You can’t have a good day with a bad attitude, and you can’t have a bad day with a good attitude.” — Joyce Meyer

Vision and purpose

1. “Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.” — Tony Hsieh

2. “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” — Anatole France

3. “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti

4. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” — Thomas Jefferson

5. “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.” — Joel A. Barker

6. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.” — B.C. Forbes

8. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” — Ingvar Kamprad

Quotes to share with your team

1. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller

2. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.” — Andrew Carnegie

3. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard

4. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford

Not just to be read, but lived

Whether you're running a company or mentoring your teen through their first business idea, the best lessons often come in just a few words. These quotes aren’t just meant to be read—they’re meant to be lived.

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This blog post is provided "as is" and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional advice. Some content in this post may have been created using artificial intelligence; however, every blog post is reviewed by at least two human editors.