50 Motivational Business Quotes to Inspire a Winner’s Mindset

It’s important to begin each day with a winner’s mindset. Deciding how your day will unfold before you even leave for the office (even if it’s just down the hall) has a powerful impact on the type of day you will experience.

We choose our attitude, focus, and emotions, so why not choose to set you mind in the direction of success too? For me, inspirational and motivational business quotes can have a powerfully positive effect on my thinking, which fuels my actions each day.

As I teach my clients, garbage in is garbage out, so I endeavor to feed my mind with the type of thinking I want to maintain throughout the course of my day. By doing so, I reduce the frequency of my reactivity in the face of challenges, and am better able to uphold an opportunistic mindset.

Below are 50 of my favorite quotes, gathered from fabulous sources around the internet. I hope they will promote a shift toward a winner’s mindset for you, especially when the going gets rough — and it quite often does in business. Cast a vote for your favorite from this list, or add your own in the comments below.

I encourage you to write your favorite winner’s mindset reminder on a note card and place it by your bedside. When you awake each morning, take a moment to read the card, think about how you want your day to unfold, and make it happen.

Life is not a stage on which we were created to struggle — it’s the place where we are daily invited to dance in the spotlight. – Dr. Shannon Reece

From Under30CEO.com

Identify your problems but give your power and energy to solutions. – Tony Robbins

Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out. – John Wooden

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work. – Thomas J Watson

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

From Biznik.com

EXCELLENCE: is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical and expecting more than others think is possible. – Unknown

From CarolRoth.com

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. – Harriet Tubman

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. And as we let our light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. – Marianne Williamson

Generate so much loving energy that people want to just come and hang out with you. And when they show up, bill them! – Stuart Wilde

Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay. – Maya Angelou

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. – Walter Cornish

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. – Ayn Rand

From BusinessInsider.com

We are really competing against ourselves. We have no control over how other people perform. – Pete Cashmore

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs

From Entreprenista.com

Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve. – Mary Kay Ash

My will shall shape the future.  Whether I fail or succeed shall be no one’s doing but my own.  I am the force. I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice. My responsibility.  Win or lose; only I hold the key to my destiny. – Elaine Maxwell

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake. – Marie Beyon Ray

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great. – Cher

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt

What if you began to expect the best from any situation? Isn’t it possible that you could write new chapters in your life with happy endings? Suspend your disbelief? Take a leap of faith? After all, what have you got to lose but misery and lack? – Sarah Ban Breathnach

From BusinessInsider.com

Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period. All right? – The Pursuit of Happyness

From QuickSprout.com

The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do. – Dennis Waitley

The only limits are, as always, those of vision. – James Broughton

I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah Winfrey

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. – David Rockefeller

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. – Carlos Castaneda

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. – Vince Lombardi

Look well to this day. Yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day. – Francis Gray

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches. – Napoleon Hill

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. – Bill Bradley

From StrategicBusinessTeam.com

Success isn’t about the end result; it’s about what you learn along the way. – Vera Wang

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you towards success? Or are they holding you back? – W. Clement Stone

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. – John D. Rockefeller

Start small and dream big. – Rich Dad

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals. – Jim Rohn

Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity. – Michael Dell

It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it. – Thomas Watson

From Stephen Davis

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes. – Zig Ziglar

From HumanResources.about.com

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. – Norman Vincent Peale

There is no such thing as can’t, only won’t. If you’re qualified, all it takes is a burning desire to accomplish, to make a change. Go forward, go backward. Whatever it takes! But you can’t blame other people or society in general. It all comes from your mind. When we do the impossible we realize we are special people. – Jan Ashford

Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek. – Mario Andretti

From MarketingArtfully.com

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance. – Owen Feltham

Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication. – Cecil B. DeMille

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. – Robert Collier

Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when I know there are footprints on the moon. – Paul Brandt

From NerdBusiness.com

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place. – Nora Roberts

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. – Maya Angelou

Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. – William A. Ward

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them … into the impossible. – Arthur C. Clarke

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