A collection of quotes on the topic of business, for team, motivational, success.
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
“It is better to be alone than in bad company.”
Letter to his niece, Harriet Washington (30 October 1791)
1790s
Variant: It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Disputed
Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”
“Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.”
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
Source: Jordan, Michael. I Can't Accept Not Trying : Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. p. 129
Context: I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying [no hard work].
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. (p. 20, 24)
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
Variant: Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
“Choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
Sometimes quoted with "difficult" instead of "hard".
A similar thought was expressed by automobile executive Clarence Bleicher in 1947 (before Bill Gates was born): "if you get a tough job, one that is hard, and you haven’t got a way to make it easy, put a lazy man on it, and after 10 days he will have an easy way to do it".
Misattributed
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/
The Cancer Journals, Special Edition, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, CA, 1997, p. 13.
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”
Variant: Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen.
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
Context: A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [... ] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.”
Amy, in Ch. 44 : My Lord and Lady
Variant: I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Source: Little Women (1868)
“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Attributed quotes
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Attributed to Winston Churchill in The Prodigal Project : Book I : Genesis (2003) by Ken Abraham and Daniel Hart, p. 224 and other places, though no source attribution is given. It actually derives from an advertising campaign for Budweiser beer in the late 1930s.
Misattributed
Variant: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/03/success-final/
As quoted in The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead (1954)
1950s
Variant: Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”
Source: The Alchemist
“No matter where you go, there you are”
Source: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes
“It's not how you start, but it's how you finish.”
Upon winning four Gold medals after the silver medal in his first race in Rome 2009.
“It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”
Statement after his speech before the League of Nations (30 June 1936), as quoted in " "The Lion is Freed" in TIME magazine (8 September 1975) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917777,00.html?iid=chix-sphere
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
Source: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (1989), p. 101
“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”
Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657 note: 1940s, Male and Female (1949)
“I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
Variant: I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Source: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 15.
Context: It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
“You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”
“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
“A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”
Variant: To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 237
“Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.”
As quoted in Sheroes: Bold, Brash, and Absolutely Unabashed Superwomen from Susan B. Anthony to Xena (1998) by Varla Ventura, p. 150
“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
“One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.”
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.”
“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
Old Man's Advice to Youth: "Never Lose a Holy Curiosity," http://books.google.com/books?id=dlYEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=Life%2C%202%20May%201955&pg=PA61#v=onepage&q=Life,%202%20May%201955&f=false LIFE magazine (2 May 1955) statement to William Miller, p. 64.
1950s
Context: The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. … Don't stop to marvel.
“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Variant: great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 22 October 1882, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/237.htm
1880s, 1882
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
1960s, A Christmas Sermon (1967)
Variant: We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings.] A facsimile of the original is online at The digital Library https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792. The quotation is 7-8 lines up from the bottom of the first page. The phrase is most famous as an expression of Newton's but he was using a metaphor which in its earliest known form was attributed to Bernard of Chartres by John of Salisbury: Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants. Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.
Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton
Variant: Success is not measured by the position one has reached in life, rather by the obstacles one overcomes while trying to succeed
Source: 1900s, Up From Slavery (1901), Chapter II: Boyhood Days
Source: Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
Context: I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”
Mark Twain's Notebook, 1887
Letter to Cordelia Welsh Foote (Cincinnati), 2 December 1887. Letter reprinted http://www.twainquotes.com/Success.html in Benjamin De Casseres's When Huck Finn Went Highbrow https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-huck-finn-went-highbrow/oclc/2514292 (1934)
“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, p. 120, as quoted in Socinianism And Arminianism : Antitrinitarians, Calvinists, And Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (2005) by Martin Mulsow, Jan Rohls, p. 273.
As quoted in God in the Equation : How Einstein Transformed Religion (2002) by Corey S. Powell, p. 29
Variant: Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
“no expectations, no disappointments!”
Sleeping with Strangers
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
"Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy", Joseph P. Lash (1980) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/21/together/
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
As quoted in The Military Quotation Book (2002) by James Charlton, p. 93
Attributed
“And the whole [is] greater than the part.”
Καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους μεῖζον
ἐστιν
Elements, Book I, Common Notion 8 (5 in certain editions)
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Η 1045a 8–10: "… the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts … [πάντων γὰρ ὅσα πλείω μέρη ἔχει καὶ μὴ ἔστιν οἷον σωρὸς τὸ πᾶν]"
Euclid’s Elements
“None of it is important or all of it is.”
Introduction
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
Context: "... Let us go," we said, "into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too." And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn't terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn't very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
“Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”
“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
“It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are
going.”
“The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.”
“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Statement of January 1991, as quoted in Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett (2007) by Andrew Kilpatrick
“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.”
Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey
“Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.”
Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul
“There is no "I" in team but there is in win.”
“The road to success is always under construction”
Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Source: Finally and Forever
“You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.”
“You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
“A quitter never wins-and-a winner never quits.”
Variant: A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
“TEAMWORK: the fuel that allows common people attain uncommon results.”
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
“The main ingredient of stardom, is the rest of the team.”
They Call Me Coach (1972)
Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”
This is attributed to Truman in some sources, but a similar saying is recorded as early as 1909 https://books.google.com/books?id=bidJAAAAIAAJ&dq=how%20much%20%22care%20who%20gets%20the%20credit%22&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q=how%20much%20%22care%20who%20gets%20the%20credit%22&f=false.
Misattributed
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
“Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier.”
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Variant: Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Source: The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith
“The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.”
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
As quoted in News Journal [Mansfield, Ohio] (3 August 1965)
Attributed from posthumous publications
“The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”
Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”
