Here are the top 10 quotes every entrepreneur should live by. Learn from Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, Ted Turner, Anita Roddick, Chris Gardner, Donald Trump, Isadore Sharp, and Trip Hawkins.
1. Steve Jobs, Apple
“Believe that things will work out somehow… follow your intuition and curiosity… trust your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path… You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future… 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… Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
2. Oprah Winfrey, Harpo
“What I know for sure is that if you want to have success, you can’t make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant – and the success will naturally follow… If you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. And, I truly believe, that the reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute been money. Would you do your job and not be paid for it? I would do this job, and take on a second job just to make ends meet if nobody paid me. That’s how you know you are doing the right thing.”
3. Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins Co.
“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided… The most important thing you can do to achieve your goals is to make sure that as soon as you set them, you immediately begin to create momentum. The most important rules that I ever adopted to help me in achieving my goals were those I learned from a very successful man who taught me to first write down the goal, and then to never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.”
4. Ted Turner, Turner Broadcasting
“All my life people have said that I wasn’t going to make it… You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
5. Anita Roddick, The Body Shop
“Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”
6. Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins Co.
“For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent. Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards… If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve… Whatever happens, take responsibility… The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”
7. Chris Gardner, Gardner Rich & Co.
“Find something that you love. Something that gets you so excited you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. Forget about money. Be happy.”
8. Donald Trump, The Trump Organization
“I was relentless, even in the face of total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.”
9. Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons
“Whatever you do, don’t ever use a crutch, and don’t ever think of having an excuse for not having said, ‘Yeah, I did my best.’”
10. Trip Hawkins, Electronic Arts
“One quality of entrepreneurship is just persistence, not giving up because you have road blocks and also not giving in because other people tell you that you’re nuts. You are nuts and you should be proud of it. Stick with what you believe in.”