“My Career Plans Were Much More Exciting When I Was 5” & 25 Other Career Quotes

career quotes

Quotes have been speaking to the souls of millennials since our Myspace and away message days. Don’t pretend that you didn’t have a “if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best” or “and I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand” quote somewhere on your 2005 online presence. Not only did these quotes allow us to speak our soul, but they also gave us motivation. Let’s relive our glory days. Here are the top 25 career quotes to inspire your workday.

  1. Learn from the past, live in the present, and create your future. – Joel Brown
  2. I’ve missed more than 9,000 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 and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan
  3. Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it away from you. – Mark Cuban
  4. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. – Dr. Seuss
  5. Opportunities don’t happen, you create them. – Chris Grosser
  6. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
  7. Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it. – Katharine Whitehorn
  8. Be so good they can’t ignore you. – Steve Martin
  9. The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Abraham Lincoln
  10. Work to become, not to acquire. – Elbert Hubbard
  11. Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And more 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
  12. I never dreamed about success, I worked for it. – Estée Lauder
  13. Doesn’t matter if the glass is half-empty or half-full. All that matters is that you are the one pouring the water. – Mark Cuban
  14. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on. – Sheryl Sandberg
  15. Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  16. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. – Steve Jobs
  17. No one can discover you until you do. Exploit your talents, skills and strengths and make the world sit up and take notice. – Rob Liano
  18. If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs. – Tony Gaskins
  19. Be true to what naturally interests you – and be brave enough to turn an obsession into a profession. – Shelly Branch
  20. There is only one way to avoid criticism. Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. – Aristotle
  21. Your career is your business. It’s time for you to manage it as a CEO. – Dorit Sher
  22. Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your two ears. – Laird Hamilton
  23. You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. – Confucius
  24. If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them. – Jane Fonda
  25. Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. – Oprah

We won’t judge you if you print these out to hang in your cubicle; in fact, we encourage you to do so. Everyone needs a little pick me up now and then, and these quotes are great motivational reminders. Tweet them, post them, share them, read them out loud to your cubicle neighbors – just promise us you won’t set them as your out of office message.