30 Cheerfully Encouraging Quotes to Uplift You As an Entrepreneur

Whether you're in the early stages of creating a product, the final phase of launching a service, or just in the thick of building and growing your creative business, there will be those moments when you question if this whole creative-entrepreneur thing is worth it.

It’s always helpful, during such times, to have uplifting words of wisdom and truth on hand to encourage and keep you focused on what matters when building your business.

Free your mind and allow yourself to be encouraged by these words. Think about how you can apply these nuggets of wisdom from truly inspiring men and women in your own situation.

Uplifting Words of Wisdom and Truth for Entrepreneurs

As you read these quotes, be helpful and you share your favorite quotes from the list with others so that they too can be encouraged as they build their businesses. Enjoy!

1. “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

— a student of Warren G. Tracy

2. “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

3. “In every success story, you will find someone who has made a courageous decision.” 

— Peter F. Drucker

 4. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” 

— Peter Drucker

5. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” 

— Mark Twain

6. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” 

— Napoleon Hill

7. “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.” 

— Christopher Morley

8. “Success is not what you have, but who you are.” 

— Bo Bennet

9. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” 

— Theodore Roosevelt

10. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” 

— Woody Allen

11. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.” 

— Abraham Lincoln

12. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” 

— William Feather

13. “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” 

— Howard Aiken

14. “Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” 

— Confucius

15. “Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.” 

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

16. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” 

— Winston Churchill

17. “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake; you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” 

— Adam Osborne

18. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” 

— Albert Schweitzer

19. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” 

— Jim Rohn

20. “One must spend time in gathering knowledge to give it out richly.”

— Edward C. Steadman

21. “Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day.”

— Zen Proverb

22. “Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”

— Norman Cousins

23. “Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.”

— Author Unknown

24. “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”

— Thomas Edison

25. “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”

— Jimmy Johnson

26. “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I cannot accept not trying.” 

— Michael Jordan

27. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” 

— Corneille

28. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

— Albert Einstein 

29. “The closer one gets to the top, the more one finds there is no “top.”

— Nancy Barcus

30. “Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.”

— Walter Cronkite