45 Best Inspirational Workplace Quotes

How to motivate employees is not centered only on quoting motivational messages from successful people. Although it is integral in keeping the workforce spirited, and improving enthusiasm, having a motivational strategy is important to keep employees motivated for a prolonged period.

As the Greek philosopher, Aristotle says: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."

Why is a motivation strategy important?

A motivation strategy is important because not every task will excite and interest the people charged with completing the work. If you expect quality work from your employees every day, they must be happy when they are at work and enjoy collaborating with their colleagues.

Before creating a motivational strategy, you would need input from members of your management team and your employees. The result of such a research process will offer you an insight into what will work best for your workforce.

So, if a larger percentage of your workers believe inspirational quotes spur them to fulfill their duties, you'll add such quotes to your motivational strategy.

Types of  motivational workplace quotes

A restaurant owner/manager quoting "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" by Winston Churchill when a cook messes up its signature meal would be out of place.

In such a case, no motivational quote is needed. The cook should be relieved of kitchen duties until they perfect the recipe.

In other words, not every situation requires business owners and managers to quote Aristotle, Lao Tzu, or Steve Jobs. Sometimes failure must be condemned, while they can be forgiven and the erring party encouraged at other times.

There are motivational quotes for different instances from famous people in history. This article will provide 10 Inspirational Workplace quotes for dealing with failure, Change, and perseverance.

Inspirational workplace quotes about failure

1. Maya Angelou: "We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated."

2. Benjamin Franklin: "I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."

3. Camille Paglia: "in the real world, brilliant people fail, and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ. Also, the idea that intelligence can be gauged by an IQ test is erroneous."

4. Apoorve Dubey: "The only thing that separates Success from failure is one last attempt. Try one more time, and you will get lucky."

5. J.K Rowling: "It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in that case, you fail by default."

6. Michael Jordan: "I've missed more than 900 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 again. That is why I succeed."

7. Jose N. Harris: "There comes a time in your life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling is a part of life; getting back up is living."

8. Charles Barkley: "If you are afraid of failure, you don't deserve to be successful."

9. William Saroyan: "Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from Success, you know."

10. Bruce Lee: "Don't fear failure - not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail."

Inspirational quotes about Change at work

11. Albert Einstein: "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."

12. Bill Clinton: "The price for doing the same thing is far higher than the price of change."

13. Gail Sheehy: "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living."

14. George Bernard Shaw: "When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to live a stationary one and do without change."

15. Georg C. Lichtenberg: "I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."

16. John F. Kennedy: "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

17. John Kenneth Galbraith: "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

18. Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

19. Mark Sanborn: "Your Success in life isn't based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers, and business."

20. Winston Churchill: "There is nothing wrong with change if it is in the right direction."

Inspirational workplace quotes about perseverance

21. Abraham Lincoln: "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."

22. Pele: "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."

23. Ramana Maharshi: "No one succeeds without effort. Those who succeed owe their Success to perseverance."

24. Joyce Brothers: "The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top."

25. Francis Bacon: "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

26. Robert Green Ingersoll: "The greatest test of courage on Earth is to bear defeat without losing heart."

27. George Clooney: "The only failure is not to try."

28. Robert H. Schuller: "Problems are not stopping signs. They are guidelines."

29. Louis D. Brandeis: "Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done."

30. T.S. Eliot: "Only those who will risk going too far can find out how far one can go."

Inspirational Workplace Quotes About Work & Life

31. Brian Dyson: "Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends, and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life."

A quote with depth that aims to highlight a simple yet profound fact. Work is important – but often less fragile a relationship to upkeep than things like family and friends!

32. Marissa Mayer: "You can't have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you."

It's important to pick your battles and choose what you want to focus on. This makes it easier to go after them with all your heart and, hopefully, manifest them into your life!

33. Michelle Obama: "Women, in particular, need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we're scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don't have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own' to-do list."

The importance of taking a breather is paramount. You can't do the best job possible at taking care of everyone and everything around you if you are always feeling overwhelmed yourself!

34. Marissa Mayer: "Burnout is about resentment. Preventing it is about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is you're giving up that makes you resentful."

No external work can replace the invaluable knowledge that comes with introspection. This is why you should strive to take the time to get to know yourself!

35. Zig Ziglar: "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily."

Being your motivational force is a skill that is as hard to cultivate as it is rewarding. Please find time to do things that help you regain some of this motivation, and your future self will thank you for it.

36. Hillary Clinton: "Don't confuse having a career with having a life."

We can have the best, most rewarding career in the world. But at the end of the day, will it matter that much if it has come at the cost of the finer things in life? Definitely something worth thinking about.

37. Arianna Huffington: "We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in."

Changing your perspective about Success is a sure-fire way to achieve it faster. Streamline your work by working smart, not hard – because the quality of results doesn't depend on the number of hours you slaved away trying to get them!

38. Thomas Edison: "Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose."

Funnily enough, time is the one thing we don't seem to value that much – often sacrificing it at the cost of getting more, often unnecessary, work done. Nobody's saying do less than you should, but you definitely shouldn't let work overly affect your most precious commodity of all – time!

39. Michael Dell: "Technology now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from almost any device. This is dramatically changing the way people work, facilitating 24/7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time zones, countries, and continents."

While technology can be a great thing, it can also make the distinction between work and life harder to make in the current scenario. Be aware, and hopefully, you won't stretch yourself too thin trying to be everywhere and do everything at once!

40. Sir Richard Branson: "To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision."

We may tend to get caught up in picking up the slack for others or worrying about their responsibilities. It's important to cultivate a sense of trust in your coworkers that allows you to take a step back and focus on your duties instead.

41. Marc Benioff: "I believe a balanced life is essential, and I try to make sure that all of our employees know that and live that way. It's crucial to me as a manager that I help ensure that our employees are as successful as our customers and partners. I also think that employees these days expect less of a separation of work and personal life. That doesn't mean that work tasks should encroach upon our personal time, but it does mean that employees today expect more from the companies for whom they work. Why shouldn't your workplace reflect your values? Why is 'giving back' not a part of our jobs? The answer for us is to integrate philanthropy with work."

If all CEOs adapted this philosophy, it would lead to happier, more fulfilled people in the workforce. The frontrunners of companies must lead by example – trying to instill positivity that transforms into productivity.

42. Rasheed Ogunlaru: "Always take some of the play, fun, freedom, and wonder of the weekend into your week and your work."

It is a compelling way of ultimately making your work seem less stressful than it otherwise does. Why not try to be a little more easy-going and have fun with it as much as possible? This would result in you being more engaged with work, eventually leading to better results.

43. Kathy Kristof: "The most important thing is to have dedicated office space where you can CLOSE THE DOOR and have set office hours. ... I did the opposite and allowed work to swallow my home life for a while. ... Stupid mistake."

While some of us may think that it is more comfortable or easy to work from bed, the significance of creating a separate workspace cannot be oversold. For one thing, the lines that tend to get blurred become easy to distinguish between. When you're in there working, you're just working, and when you leave – you're done and can focus on your life!

44. Catherine Pulsifer: "The gift of balance in your life – may you find the balance of life, time for work but also time for play. Too much of one thing ends up creating stress that no one needs in their life."

This is the ideal that everyone should be aiming for - because the bottom line isn't about the money or Success that you garner. It's about how happy, stress-free, and rewarded you feel – both at work and in life!

45. Stephen Covey: "The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

Conclusion

An inspired workforce can be the difference between a blossoming company and a failing one. Like content writers on Writing Judge draw inspiration from different sources during the research process to conclude their custom writing services, business owners must find what inspires their employees and stick to it.