59 Inspiring Job Quotes

September 12, 2025
16 min read
3129 words
59 Inspiring Job Quotes

Finding motivation in your work can sometimes be a challenge, but the right words have the power to inspire and uplift your spirit. We've gathered a curated collection of the top 59 inspiring job quotes to help you stay focused, energized, and passionate about your career. Whether you're starting a new role, facing a tough project, or simply looking for a spark of encouragement, these quotes offer wisdom and positivity to keep you moving forward.

1. “You should read something else."Why would he have done that to him?"I don't know," she said.Do you ever feel like Job?"She smiled, a little twinkle in her eyes.Sometimes."But you haven't lost your faith?"No," I knew she hadn't, but I think I was losing mine.Is it because you think you might get better?"No," she said,"its because its the only thing I have left.” - Nicholas Sparks

2. “Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.” - Dick Francis

3. “Os livros são escritos devido a anos virados do avesso por ideias que não nos libertam até serem escritas e, até mesmo então, a escrita é o último recurso, um resgate desesperado que pagamos para que a vida nos seja devolvida.” - Richard Bach

4. “He was willing to pay her to hang around his house and paint Piper's fingernails? It sounded as easy as Britney Spears.” - Erin McCarthy

5. “The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.” - Seth Godin

6. “Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ” - John Kennedy Toole

7. “This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.” - Cormac McCarthy

8. “I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” - Toni Morrison

9. “I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.” - Karl Lagerfeld

10. “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” - Jimmy Johnson

11. “Everybody has something, that one thing they must do to feel happy. I think this is yours, and I want you to be happy. You don’t have to do it, but it’s here if you choose to come back to it.” - Ilona Andrews

12. “Cat doesn’t have to work. She’s a woman of independent means. I settled enough money on her to allow her the freedom to do anything she wished. She went to boarding school for four years, and stayed to teach for another two. Eventually she came to me and said she’d accepted a position as a governess for the Hathaway family. I believe you were in France with Win at the time. Cat went for the interview, Cam and Amelia liked her, Beatrix and Poppy clearly needed her, and no one seemed inclined to question her lack of experience.”“Of course not,” Leo said acidly. “My family would never bother with something so insignificant as job experience. I’m sure they started the interview by asking what her favorite color was.” - Lisa Kleypas

13. “A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it. ” - James Agate

14. “by and large,mothers and house wives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.They are the great vacationless class” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

15. “Sarek frowned. "Insubordination?""Eccentricity," Spock replied. "Captain Kirk allows a great deal of leeway as long as his crewmembers do their jobs well. Mr. Chevron simply takes advantage of it.""That good at his job, is he?" asked Sarek."Indeed. Extremely good.” - Jean Lorrah

16. “The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. 69 L” - Oswald Chambers

17. “I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.” - Haruki Murakami

18. “A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it.” - Stephen M. Irwin

19. “My job is to scream cockle-doodle-doo. Don't blame me if the sun doesn't rise.” - Janet Skeslien Charles

20. “Abba, you may not like it, but what I'm doing is important. If you don't agree, then I'm sorry. I can't do anything about it.” - Farahad Zama

21. “Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.” - Jodi Picoult

22. “Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God. If we are bored with life there is something wrong with our concept of God and His involvement in our daily lives. Even the most dull and tedious days of our lives are ordained by God and ought to be used by us to glorify Him.” - Jerry Bridges

23. “We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job...” - Emil Cioran

24. “If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.” - Jess C. Scott

25. “[Poem: Slates of Grey]Sullen faces like slates of grey—What I’d seen on a walk today.Bodies rushing bodies boltingTime for life a disregarding.Money to make and to grow oldWhat about the hands to hold?Deadlines, projects, people to meetWhat about our own two feet.Sullen faces like slates of grey...What I’d see most anyday.” - Jess C. Scott

26. “You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that—if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is—I wouldn’t give twopence for him’— here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers— ‘whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.” - George Eliot

27. “I determine to render more and better service, each day, than I am being paid to render. Those that reach the top are the ones who are not content with doing only what is required of them.” - Og Mandino

28. “Devereaux is going with our pitch.”“Hey, that’s just great,” I said superperkily. “Wendell’s or mine?”“Yours.”“But you want to fire me. So fire me.”“We can’t fire you. They loved you. The head guy, Leonard Daly, thought you were, I quote, ‘agreat kid, very courageous’ and a natural to do a whispering campaign. He said you hadbelievability.”“That’s too bad.”“Why? You’re not quitting!”I thought about it. “Not if you don’t want me to. Do you?”Go on, say it.298 ♥elavanilla♥“No.”“No what?”“No, we don’t want you to quit.”“Ten grand more, two assistants, and charcoal suits. Take it or leave it.”Ariella swallowed. “Okay to the money, okay to the assistants, but I can’t green-light charcoalsuits. Formula Twelve is Brazilian, we need carnival colors.”“Charcoal suits or I’m gone.”“Orange.”“Charcoal.”“Orange.”“Charcoal.”“Okay, charcoal.”It was an interesting lesson in power. The only time you truly have it is when you genuinelydon’t care whether you have it or not.“Right,” I said. “I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.” - Marian Keyes

29. “Getting too interested in the English way of life won't help you land a permanent job.” - Mary Ellis

30. “Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.” - Daniel Amory

31. “I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”“How would you introduce her?” I asked.“I’m just going to say her name,” he said.” - Daniel Amory

32. “The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan.” - Stephen King

33. “My pet-sitting day ends around sunset, and it's very satisfying to know that I've made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined, and played with them until all our hearts were beating faster. That I kissed them goodbye and left them with their tails wagging or flipping or at least raised in a happy kind of way. That's a heck of a lot more than any president, pope, prime minister, or potentate can say, and I wouldn't switch places with any of them.” - Blaize Clement

34. “Tko npr. formulira govor o Bogu Abrahamovu, Izakovu i Jakovljevu tako da se u njemu više ne čuje Jobov uzdisaj i tužaljka 'Ta dokle još?', taj se ne bavi teologijom nego mitologijom.” - Johann Baptist Metz

35. “No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, 'I am baffled!' and submits to be floated passively back to land.” - Charlotte Brontë

36. “Let the dogs bark, the wolves howl, the lightnings flash and the crows caw, you continue doing your job!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

37. “The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

38. “In bad countries the government takes care of everyone. In the best ones that's not necessary!‏” - Celso Cukierkorn

39. “If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” - Simon Sinek

40. “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” - Mark Twain

41. “It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.” - Seeley James

42. “No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusionsabout himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when ourappointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception.” - Joseph Conrad

43. “For God's sakes, quit worrying about your next job. Just do the best you can at the job you have now, and the offers will come. And when they do, if you have confidence in yourself you don't have to feel that you can't turn it down if it isn't quite right for you because you fear you'll never get another offer. You will. Wait for the right opportunity, and turn down all the rest. It will make all the difference.” - Bo Schembechler

44. “The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.” - Núria Añó

45. “We are trained to be employees, but no one said that we have endure a limited salary that barely keeps pace with inflation.” - Carlos Roche

46. “Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.” - Frederick Buechner

47. “The primary purpose of going to college isn't to get a great job. The primary purpose of college is to build a strong mind, which leads to greater self-awareness, capability, fulfillment, and service opportunities, which, incidentally, should lead to a better job.” - Sean Covey

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

49. “Make no mistake: Your salary is held to the same standards your grades were held to in the educational system, where you couldn't surpass a 100 no matter how hard you worked or how intelligent you were.” - Carlos Roche

50. “I too was pinched off from a piece of clay, I too modeled by omnipotence and flankedby things too wonderful for me” - Bryana Johnson

51. “I‘m very aware that my personal life, my marriage, is the source of speculation and interest in the department and with the public. I can live with that. I’m also aware that my husband’s businesses, and his style of conducting his businesses, are also the source of speculation and interest. I have no particular problem with that. But I resent very much that my reputation and my husband’s character should be questioned this way. From the media, Commander, it’s to be expected, but not from my superior officer. Not from any member of the department I’ve served to the best of my ability. I want you to take note, Commander, that turning in my badge would be like cutting off my arm. But if it comes down to a choice between the job and my marriage, then I lose the arm.” - J.D. Robb

52. “Never leave a job unfinished, unless you are unable to finish it.” - Santonu Kumar Dhar

53. “The American College of Sports Medicine found that the productivity of people after exercise was an average of 65 percent higher than those who did not exercise. If I have something that's really bothering me, so much that it almost hurts my head to try to sort it out, I always find the solution in a puddle of sweat! Intense exercise is like taking a magic pill that gives you the ability to solve problems like a superhero.” - Chalene Johnson

54. “Never send a Man in to do a Donkey's job” - Josh Stern

55. “I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.” - Michelle M. Pillow

56. “I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.” - Charles Bukowski

57. “... a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living.” - Mortimer Jerome Adler

58. “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

59. “გაქვს დრო მუშაობისთვის,და გაქვს დრო სიყვარულისთვის.სხვა რამისთვის დრო უბრალოდ არ გრჩება.” - Coco Chanel