36 Inspirational Career Quotes

In the journey of building a fulfilling career, inspiration can be a powerful motivator. Words of wisdom can offer guidance, provide comfort during challenging times, and ignite the passion needed to push beyond limits. Whether you're navigating a daunting career transition, seeking feedback on your work, or simply looking for a boost to enhance your productivity, inspirational quotes can be a great companion. In this collection, we've gathered 36 of the most powerful and uplifting career quotes designed to inspire, motivate, and perhaps even transform your professional outlook. Get ready to be inspired and let these words guide you to new heights in your career journey.

1. “I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.” - Maya Angelou

2. “The first test of ability and intelligence is to find a field of endeavor in which profits are large and risks small.” - James Gould Cozzens

3. “Cat, I'll let you in on a little secret. We don't all love our jobs every day. And doing something you have passion for doesn't make the work part of it any easier...It just makes you less likely to quit.” - Kate Jacobs

4. “No, scratch the word "career." Careers are for people who wish to advance. I only want to survive, draw a paycheck. ” - Emily Giffin

5. “I worked for a menial’s hire,Only to learn, dismayed,That any wage I had asked of Life,Life would have willingly paid.” - Jessie B. Rittenhouse

6. “Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

7. “It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past ... entangling themselves in what they were pleased to call the "problem" of Queen Elizabeth. They invented the most complicated and astonishing reasons both for her success as a sovereign and for her tortuous matrimonial policy. She was the tool of Burleigh, she was the tool of Leicester, she was the fool of Essex; she was diseased, she was deformed, she was a man in disguise. She was a mystery, and must have some extraordinary solution. Only recently has it occrurred to a few enlightened people that the solution might be quite simple after all. She might be one of the rare people were born into the right job and put that job first.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

8. “Every time you worry that you could get trapped in some kind of work you don't care about, you're dealing with the problem of meaningfulness. I guarantee that in the back of your mind is the thought that somehow you have to make a contribution to something, be acknowledged, do something that matters--or you're just fooling around.” - Barbara Sher

9. “Everybody needs a career manager."- Lady Macbeth” - Robert Lynn Asprin

10. “God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. (“Mad House”)” - Richard Matheson

11. “Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.” - Richard Matheson

12. “(Georgie) Two hundred years later and it's exactly the same thing. You want to spend every single moment with your children and still have a fulfilling life at work.” - Nancy Woodruff

13. “If I never got to make a living doing what I loved, I'd still do it--for fun and for free.” - Susan E. Isaacs

14. “After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.” - George Eliot

15. “what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an ‘appointment’) which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?” - George Eliot

16. “Yet for quixotic reasons--namely, that I enjoyed writing obits--I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move.” - Avi Steinberg

17. “If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.” - Chuck Palahniuk

18. “I have dozens of loyal fans! Baker's dozens! …they come in thirteens.” - Felicia Day

19. “If you can channel the best part of you that is bigger than yourself, where it’s not about your ego and not about getting ahead, then you can have fun and you aren’t jealous of others. You see other people's talent as another branch of your own. You can keep it rooted in joy. Life is long and there are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes. The point of it all is to learn.” - Ethan Hawke

20. “Friendship is not by force but by choice.You can never please everybody, he who aims to please everybody will end up pleasing nobody.” - Stella Oladiran

21. “Pitting your dream against someone else's is a fantastic way to get discouraged and depressed.” - Jon Acuff

22. “Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies.” - Thomas Merton

23. “Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for yourself—you are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just look about you in the place you find yourself in, and try to make things a little better and honester there.” - Thomas Hughes

24. “If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music.” - Guy Kawasaki

25. “Nein, die Schule hat keinen bestimmenden Einfluss auf meine Entwicklung gehabt. Die Schule hat von meinen besonderen Anlagen wohl instinktiv etwas gespürt, sie aber als obstinate Untauglichkeit gewertet und verworfen. Ein Lehrer drohte, zufällig nicht mir, sondern einem anderen Schüler, mit den Worten: "Ich werde dir deine Karriere schon verderben!" Am gleichen Tag las ich bei Storm den Spruch: "Was du immer kannst, zu werden, scheue Arbeit nicht und Wachen, aber hüte deine Seele vor dem Karrieremachen.” - Thomas Mann

26. “Don't confuse having a career with having a life.” - Hillary Rodham Clinton

27. “Imagination is pure potentiality for creation. We shouldn't submit it to the hourly wages we subject our time at work.” - Carlos Roche

28. “If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.” - Alan Watts

29. “Successful people do what others know they should do but will not. To become a success, or just be *more* successful, you will do what average, less-motivated people will not.” - Chalene Johnson

30. “You have tremendous gifts to give; God sent them with you when you came to this earth. And while you might forget them, or doubt they exist, God does not forget and He will show them to you. As soon as your gifts are dedicated to His work, they will blossom. Chains that might have held you back for years will dissolve. And you will feel free. You will learn that your spirit is bigger than your circumstances, as soon as you put your spirit first.” - Marianne Williamson

31. “What would you do if you weren't afraid?” - Sheryl Sandberg

32. “Done is better than perfect.” - Sheryl Sandberg

33. “We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” - Sheryl Sandberg

34. “I don't have any babies or ambition. I have it all!” - Nan Little

35. “I love my career. It is a career. A difficult one that takes many hours and total dedication to my craft. It is also what I was born to do--tell stories and entertain.” - Michelle M. Pillow

36. “Tomorrow is yesterday’s excuse for today; now has no excuses.” - George Alexiou