Quotes About Work

Here are some of my favorite quotes about work. If you know a great quote that you think I should include, please contact me.

Quotes About Vocation

“A vocation that is not mine, no matter how externally valued, does violence to the self…”
Parker J. Palmer – Author, Educator, and Activist

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.”
Honoré de Balzac – Novelist and Playwright

Quotes About Loving Your Work

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And 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. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple Computer, NeXT, and Pixar Animation Studios, Commencement Speech Delivered At Stanford University, 2005

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Confucius – Social Philosopher and Teacher

“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
John Ruskin – Art Critic and Social Activist

“The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s really a different kind of life.”
Buckminster Fuller – Engineer, Author, Designer, Inventor, and Futurist

“Work without love is slavery.”
Mother Teresa – Catholic Nun, Humanitarian

Quotes About Work Happiness

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.”
John Ruskin – Art Critic and Social Activist

“To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness.”
John Dewey – Educator, Philosopher, Psychologist

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
Parker J. Palmer – Author, Educator, and Activist

Quotes About The Importance of Work

“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”
Sigmund Freud – Neurologist and Founder of Psychoanalysis

“Love and work, work and love…that’s all there is.”
Sigmund Freud – Neurologist and Founder of Psychoanalysis

Quotes About Work and Luck

“Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”
Garrison Keillor – Writer and Broadcaster

“The harder I work the luckier I get.”
Samuel Goldwyn – Film Producer

Quotes About Work and Persistence

“I’ve missed more than 9000 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 – Retired American NBA Basketball Player (considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time)

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
Calvin Coolidge – 30th President of the United States

“Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.”
Henry Wheeler Shaw writing as Josh Billings – Humorist

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.”
Louis Pasteur – Scientist and Inventor of the Process of Pasteurization

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Albert Einstein, Father of Modern Physics

Quotes About Mistakes At Work

“Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.”
Ingvar Kamprad – Founder of IKEA

“I’ve missed more than 9000 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 – NBA Basketball Superstar

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
Albert Einstein – Father of Modern Physics

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard – Author, Philosopher

Quotes About Work and Risk

“The biggest risk you can take is to take no risk.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

Quotes About Failure

“I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.”
George Burns – Comedian

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Robert F. Kennedy – Politician

Quotes About Critics

“When people undermine your dreams, predict your doom, or criticize you, remember they’re telling you their story, not yours.”
Cynthia Occelli – Life Coach

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt – 26th President of the United States

Quotes About Teaching and Learning

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
Benjamin Franklin – Inventor, Printer, Philosopher, Founding Father of the United States

Funny Quotes About Work

“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”
Edgar Bergen – Academy Award Winning Actor and Ventriloquist

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work…I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Woody Allen – Writer, Director, and Actor