Everyone gets stuck in a rut sometimes, and while only working when inspiration strikes is a surefire way to meet failure, even the best of us can benefit from a little motivational pick-me-up. That’s where inspirational quotes come into play as a bit of a mental hack to light a fire under your ass so you jump onto your next Side Hustle. A quote can be like a quick shot of coffee for your uninspired mind. Quotes can help to remind you that you aren’t alone, and you aren’t the only one who has ever struggled as they reached towards success. Quotes can be uplifting, and can rekindle the fire that may have burned low in your heart. They can also provide that need kick-in-the-rear you need when you feel like all there is left to do is give up.
So, without further ado, here are 100 of our favorite motivational quotes for budding hustlers and weary veterans alike!
1) “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
— Suzy Kassem
2) “Because you are alive, everything is possible.”
— Thich Nhat Hahn
3) “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 want to become. Everything else is secondary. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
— Steve Jobs
4) “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffet
5) “Don’t you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct.”
— Barbara Corcoran
6) “If you want something you’ve never had, you must do something you’ve never done.”
— Thomas Jefferson
7) “Losers quit when they fail. Winners fail until they succeed.”
— Robert Kiyosaki
8) “What you do today can improve all of your tomorrows.”
— Ralph Marston
9) “If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don’t want.”
— Kevin Ngo
10) “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.”
— Jerry West
11) “She remembered who she was and the game changed.”
— Lalah Deliah
12) “We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.”
— John F. Kennedy
13) “Success is never owned. It’s rented. And the rent is due every day.”
— J.J. Watt
14) “Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”
— Michelle Obama
15) “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
16) “Start doing what is necessary, then do what’s possible, and then suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
17) “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
18) “Your potential to change and succeed is much greater than if you felt comfortable.”
— Curtis Zimmerman
19) “People remember “Living the Dream” because it’s about the immediate. You are Living the Dream TODAY. Don’t wait until tomorrow to live your dream because tomorrow it could be too late.”
— Curtis Zimmerman
20) “Be thankful for the hard times, for they have made you.”
— Leonardo DiCaprio
21) “In life you have three choices: Give in, give up, or give it your all.”
— Charleston Parker
22) “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
— Seneca, Roman Philosopher
23) “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
24) “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
25) “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
— George Eliot
26) “You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.”
— Jessica Herrin, founder and CEO of Stella & Dot
27) “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
28) “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
— Helen Keller
29) “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston S. Churchill
30) “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
— Marianne Williamson
31) “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”
— Audrey Hepburn
32) “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
33) “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
— Abraham Lincoln
34) “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
— Nicholas Klein
35) “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
— L.M. Montgomery
36) “Always do what you are afraid to do.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
37) “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
— Ayn Rand
38) “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
39) “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
40) “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
— Oprah Winfrey
41) “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
42) “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
— Lance Armstrong
There’s obviously a lot of hypocrisy in this quote, but it doesn’t make it any less true or impactful.
Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever. #LanceArmstrong #SideHustle Share on X43) “I was smiling yesterday, I am smiling today and I will smile tomorrow. Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.”
— Santosh Kalwar
44) “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
— Oscar Wilde
45) “The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”
— Oscar Wilde
46) “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
— Oscar Wilde
47) “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”
— Sara Blakely
48) “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
— Oscar Wilde
49) “One of the most important things I have learned is that businesses don’t fail, entrepreneurs give up. Now sometimes, giving up is the right decision. But usually you just need to dig in and figure out how to make things better. Remember: Every day is a new opportunity to get up and do it better than yesterday!”
— Adda Birnir
50) “There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
— Aristotle
51) “The key to success is to start before you are ready.”
— Marie Forleo
52) “The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”
— Nolan Bushnell
53) “If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.”
— Michele Ruiz
54) “Action is the foundational key to success.”
— Pablo Picasso
55) “Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.”
— Wayne Huizenga
56) “Be happy with what you have, while working for what you want.”
— Helen Keller
57) “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
— Nelson Mandela
58) “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
— Les Brown
59) “Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently.”
— Marie Forleo
60) “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
— C.G. Jung
61) “Do not be afraid of improving slowly. Be afraid of standing still.”
— Chinese Proverb
62) “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
— Stephen Hawking
63) “You will never reach your true potential living life in comfort and routine. You’ve got to take some risks.”
— Kylie Francis
64) “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
— Walt Disney
65) “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
— Robert H. Schuller
66) “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
— John A Shedd
67) “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.”
— Drew Houston
68) “Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give — with a few exceptions — generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.”
— Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest
69) “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
— John Quincy Adams
70) “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.”
— Anthony Volodkin, founder of Hype Machine
71) “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
— Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
72) “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
— Thomas Edison
73) “The stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.”
— Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week
74) “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.”
— Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA
75) “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.”
— Paul Rand, Graphic Designer
76) “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
— Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter
77) “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.”
— Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
78) “Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.”
— Oprah Winfrey
79) “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.”
— Sara Blakely, founder of SPANX
80) “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.”
— Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks
81) “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.’ ”
— Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of Github
82) “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw
83) “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
— Charles Darwin
84) “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”
— Thomas J. Watson, 2nd President of IBM
85) “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
— Jim Rohn
86) “The only thing worse than starting something and failing … is not starting something.”
— Seth Godin, Squidoo founder
87) “Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
— Japanese Proverb
88) “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
— Thomas Edison, entrepreneur and inventor
89) “You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.”
― Chuck Yeager, former United States Air Force officer
90) “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
— Caterina Fake, Flickr co-founder
91) “A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”
— Colin Powell, US statesman and retired four-star General in the United States Army
92) “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.”
— Pele, Brazilian retired professional footballer
93) “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
94) “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
— Michael Jordan
95) “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
— Nelson Mandela
96) “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.”
— Mark Cuban, entrepreneur, owner of Landmark Theaters and Chairman of AXS TV
97) “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
– Jack Canfield, American author, motivational speaker, corporate trainer, and entrepreneur
98) “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
— Thomas Edison
99) “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.”
– J.K. Rowling
100) “When I hear somebody sigh, Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’ ”
– Sydney Harris, American journalist
Conclusion
Hopefully, these quotes helped you find your motivation to keep on hustling. The human heart is such a fickle thing, and unfortunately you won’t always feel like working when it is time to do it. Next time, when you want to procrastinate, feel unmotivated, uninspired, or even just plain scared, you can come back to these quotes and feed your soul with the wisdom of those who have walked the path before you. You can even print out (or write out) a handful of your favorites to post around your workspace.
When it comes to creating a successful side hustle, nothing can replace true dedication and hard work. We are all human, however, and when you fuel runs low, motivational quotes can be a helpful tool to refill your tank and continue moving onward.
