There are days at work when a little extra motivation and energy can make a big difference.
Feeling exhausted, lacking motivation, or simply bored is something we all experience from time to time.
Today, I aim to uplift your spirits by presenting 130 of the most uplifting, humorous, positive, and inspiring quotes for the workplace.
My hope is that you’ll find something here to infuse your morning with positivity or to reenergize your afternoon. Perhaps even something that brings a smile to your face and eases the stress a bit.
And perhaps you’ll find something worth sharing with family and colleagues to lift their spirits as well.
Inspirational Workplace Quotes for a Boost of Energy
“The future depends on what you do today.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Don’t count the days, make the days count.”
– Muhammad Ali
“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”
– Conan O’Brien
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
– Jim Rohn
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
– Thomas Edison
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
“You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
– George Lorimer
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
– Jim Rohn
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
– Henry Ford
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
– Confucius
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”
– Kobe Bryant
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
– Maya Angelou
“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
– Ray Kroc
“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.”
– Steve Jobs
“The harder I work the more I live.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.”
– Simon Sinek
“Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.”
– Robin S. Sharma
Short and Inspirational Workplace Quotes and Sayings
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
– Milton Berle
“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
– Sam Levenson
“The best revenge is massive success.”
– Frank Sinatra
“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
– Suzy Kassem
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston
“Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
– Farrah Gray
“The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.”
– Richard Bach
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
– Amelia Earhart
“Impossible is just an opinion.”
– Paulo Coelho
“Light tomorrow with today.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
– Steve Martin
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
– Henry Ford
“Done is better than perfect.”
– Sheryl Sandberg
“Without labor, nothing prospers.”
– Sophocles
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
– Peter Drucker
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
– Nelson Mandela
“The expert in anything was once a beginner.”
– Helen Hayes
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
– George Eliot
Funny Workplace Quotes for Stress Relief
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar.”
– Drew Carey
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
– Bertrand Russell
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
– Charles Lamb
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers
“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
– Jerome K. Jerome
“The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.”
– Stanley J. Randall
“Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired.”
– Michel Tournier
“If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.”
– Claude McDonald
“If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.”
– John Gotti
“I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock this afternoon.”
– Henny Youngman
“The reward for good work is more work.”
– Tom Sachs
“Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.”
– Earl Nightingale
“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”
– Edgar Bergen
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
– George Carlin
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
– Robert Frost
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
– Bill Gates
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
– Douglas Adams
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
– Lily Tomlin
“Doing nothing is very hard to do… you never know when you’re finished.”
– Leslie Nielsen
“No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early.”
– Groucho Marx
“I work for myself, which is fun. Except when I call in sick, I know I’m lying.”
– Rita Rudner
“By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”
– Robert Frost
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
– Zig Ziglar
Inspirational Workplace Quotes for Renewed Motivation and Focus
“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
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
– Charles R. Swindoll
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
– Helen Keller
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”
– Dwayne Johnson
“Don’t think about what can happen in a month. Don’t think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.”
– Eric Thomas
“If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.”
– Wayne Dyer
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
– Steve Jobs
“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
– Carrie Fisher
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
– Maya Angelou
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
– Zig Ziglar
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
– Dale Carnegie
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
– Stephen Covey
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Whenever you feel uncomfortable, instead of retreating back into your old comfort zone, pat yourself on the back and say, ‘I must be growing,’ and continue moving forward.”
– T. Harv Eker
“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
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”
– Stephen Hawking
“The best way out is always through.”
– Robert Frost
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
– Richard Branson
“There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
– Amanda Gorman
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
– M. Scott Peck
Inspirational Workplace Quotes for Teamwork and Positive Vibes
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
– Helen Keller
“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life forever.”
– Amy Poehler
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
– African Proverb
“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
– Booker T. Washington
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
– Michael Jordan
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
– Henry Ford
“Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.”
– Steve Jobs
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
– Ryunosuke Satoro
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
– Phil Jackson
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead
“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
– Patrick Lencioni
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.”
– H.E. Luccock
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
– Vince Lombardi
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
– Henry Ford
“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.”
– Napoleon Hill
“The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.”
– Margaret Carty
“It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”
– Harry S. Truman
“Tough times don’t last. Tough teams do.”
– Robert Schuller
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
– Ken Blanchard
“Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.”
– Virginia Burden
Encouraging Workplace Quotes to Help You Reach Your Goals and Dreams
“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”
– Walt Disney
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
– Robert Collier
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Nelson Mandela
“You can’t just will your dreams to come true. You have to work hard. You have to give ’em wings, arms, legs… whatever it takes to make your dreams come true.”
– Dolly Parton
“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.”
– Malala Yousafzai
“There is no magic to achievement. It’s really about hard work, choices, and persistence.”
– Michelle Obama
“The fruit of your own hard work is the sweetest.”
– Deepika Padukone
“We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.”
– Jesse Owens
“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.”
– Colin Powell
“I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.”
– Estée Lauder
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
– Tony Robbins
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”
– Florence Nightingale
“If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
– Napoleon Hill
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.”
– Walter Elliot
“The only thing standing between you and outrageous success is continuous progress.”
– Dan Waldschmidt
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas Edison
“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.”
– Gail Devers
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Looking for more motivation for work and life? Check out these short work quotes, hilarious work quotes to lighten stress, and short success quotes.
