Entrepreneur Quotes

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Do you believe in high risk and high reward? These entrepreneur quotes will have you ready to start anything.

Entrepreneurs play a huge role in and society because they start new business, innovate new products, and change lives when successful.

Any definition of the word “entrepreneur” adds another element to the mix – Risk. Entrepreneurs often take “greater than normal financial risks” to start their companies, and when they succeed, this risk means more reward.

These entrepreneur quotes show not everyone is cut out for the entrepreneurial lifestyle, but maybe they’ll inspire you to try, or to keep going!

Top 10 Entrepreneur Quotes

When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.

Robert Kiosaki

Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. It is a high-risk, high-reward proposition.

John C. Bogle
Les Wexner quote "As an entrepreneur you work out solutions'
“As an entrepreneur, you work out solutions.” – Les Wexner

Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.

Howard Schultz

All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA.

Reid Hoffman

Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.

Lori Greiner

Passion gets an entrepreneur through the startup days and the enormous efforts it takes to build a business.

Peter Diamandis
Scott Blesky quote "It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen"
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” – Scott Blesky

If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.

Ray Kroc

Starting a business is a huge amount of hard work. You had better enjoy it.

Richard Branson

Quotes about Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs definitely have a different way of seeing the world. Recognizing problems not only as opportunities, but also as potential businesses takes a special kind of vision.

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.

Roy Ash

Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.

David Karp

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Steve Jobs

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.

Bill Gates

In America, everybody thinks they’re an entrepreneur. That’s the problem. It’s not a title that anybody should call oneself.

Alan Sugar

An entrepreneur is not a person who starts a company, but he is the person who actually solves a problem.

Naveen Jain
Martha Stewart entrepreneur quote "It is within everyone’s grasp to be a CEO"
“It is within everyone’s grasp to be a CEO.” – Martha Stewart

But as an entrepreneur, you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you’re confident that you’ll catch a bird flying by. It’s an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go play because the bird doesn’t come by, but a few times it does.

Reed Hastings

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.

Henry Kravis

The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is that you’ll fail ten times for every success.

Adam Horwitz

I enjoy the hunt much more than the ‘good life’ after the victory.

Carl Icahn

If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 pm – last thing at night you’ll send emails, first thing in the morning you’ll read emails, and you’’ wake up in the middle of the night. But it’s hugely rewarding as you’re fulfilling something for yourself.

Niklas Zennstrom

You must fall in love with what you do, because being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, and overcoming a lot of adversity.

Ken Field

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Teddy Roosevelt

The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom.

Silvio Berlusconi

The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.

Michale Gerber

To any entrepreneur: if you want to do it, do it now. If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.

Catherine Cook
"The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell"
“The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell.” – Andrew Carnegie

Being an entrepreneur isn’t just a job title, and it isn’t just about starting a company. It’s a state of mind. It’s about seeing connections others can’t, seizing opportunities others won’t, and forging new direction that others haven’t.

Tory Burch

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

Henry Ford

In my opinion, no one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist.

J. Paul Getty

Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.

Zig Ziglar

Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.

Victor Kiam

An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.

Reid Hoffman

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Peter Drucker

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to love the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not.

Mark Manson

Every entrepreneur has to deal with hardship, but if we’re tough enough and thoughtful enough, we can find a way to make hard things make us better.

Eric Greitens

Entrepreneurs are great at dealing with uncertainty and also very good at minimizing risk. That’s the classic great entrepreneur.

Mohnish Pabrai
"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs"
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Grey

My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job.

Ted Turner

I’d rather invest in an entrepreneur who has failed before than one who assumes success from day one.

Kevin O’Leary

Sleeping at night is not a specialty of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur who is sleeping soundly, something bad is happening to that person; they just don’t know it’s happening yet.

Stephen A. Schwarzman

Being an entrepreneur can be learned, and that is exactly what I have done. You don’t have to be born with it or have had the ‘lemonade stand.’ But, you do need to have the passion, devotion, conviction, and sheer will and drive to make it happen.

Julia Hartz

You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.

Michael Dell

A successful entrepreneur can’t be afraid of failures or setbacks. An initial setback can be a great opportunity to take a new and more promising approach to any problem, to come back stronger than ever.

John Roos

I’m an entrepreneur. I always have been. I am curious, and I enjoy solving problems.

John McAfee

Any self-respecting entrepreneur has borrowed money from their mother at some point.

Kevin Plank

While we would typically encourage young people to start saving for the future as early as possible, it’s unlikely that a budding entrepreneur will be able to do so.

John C. Bogle

You can’t be an entrepreneur and work in a public company anymore.

Irving Azoff

Entrepreneurship Quotes

Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.

Richard Branson
Martine Syms quote "I think of entrepreneurship as a way of creating value"
“I think of entrepreneurship as a way of creating value.” – Martine Syms

It is always the start that requires the greatest effort.

James Cash Penney

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

Peter Drucker

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.

Napoleon Hill

Once you make the decision to leap into entrepreneurship, be sure to loosen your grasp on old concepts so you can swing your way to new ones.

Leah Busque

If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.

Claude McDonald

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.

Brian Tracy

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.

Mark Cuban

Being an entrepreneur is more than a matter of simply starting a business.

Michael Gerber

In risk there is reward.

Carl Icahn
"Entrepreneurship is the key to emerging technologies"
“Entrepreneurship is the key to emerging technologies.” – James H. Clark

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Walt Disney

Entrepreneurship is not only about starting businesses but is an attitude to life.

Matt Hancock

Education around entrepreneurship should start early, at secondary level, and be very robust by college level.

Stephen A. Schwarzman

I think entrepreneurship is combining a passion with the tenacity to problem-solve and the fearlessness to fail.

Julia Hartz

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Peter Drucker

I love entrepreneurship because that’s what makes this country grow, and if I can help companies grow, I am creating jobs; I am setting foundations for future generations. It sends the message that the American Dream is alive and well.

Mark Cuban

Someone once described entrepreneurship to me as a series of happy accidents.

Kevinn Systrom

The idea of entrepreneurship applies as much in politics, religion, society and the arts as it does in business.

Geoff Mulligan

The truth is that entrepreneurship is more like a roller coaster ride than a cruise.

Vivek Wadhwa

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading: buying and selling

Anita Roddick
"Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual"
“Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.” – Natalie Clifford Barne

Only the paranoid survive.

Andy Grove

I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition.

Larry Page

It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.

Steve Jobs

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Winston Churchill

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product; you’ve launched too late.

Gretta Rose van Riel

Any entrepreneur has to prepare for a lot of dark days, and they’ve got to really like what they are doing, and they have to have a reason for it to succeed.

Phil Knight

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

Donald Trump

A salary is a drug they give you to forget your dreams.

Kevin O’Leary

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.

Anonymous

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Jim Rohn
Lori Greinner quote "Entrepreneurship is the way we take control of our lives in a tough economy"
“Entrepreneurship is the way we take control of our lives in a tough economy.” – Lori Greiner

Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow.

Oprah Winfrey

It doesn’t matter whether the Dow is 5000 or 50,000. If you’re an entrepreneur, there is no bad time to start a company.

Guy Kawasaki

If you don’t have big dreams and goals, you’ll end up working for someone that does.

Unknown

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.

Reid Hoffman

High expectations are the key to everything.

Sam Walton

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.

James F. Byrnes

Quotes for Entrepreneurs

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

Walt Disney

Don’t worry about being successful but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow.

Oprah Winfrey
Draymond John entrepreneur quote "As an entrepreneur, you never stop learning"
“As an entrepreneur, you never stop learning.” – Draymond John

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with dust and sweat; who strives valiantly, who errs and may fall again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.

Teddy Roosevelt

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

John A. Shedd

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.

Sarah Blakely

There are lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is: it’s to change the world.

Phil Libin

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.

Debbi Fields

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Thomas Edison

Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

Jeff Bezos

Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.

Drew Houston

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Warren Buffet

If something is important enough, or you believe something is important enough, even if you are scared, you will keep going.

Elon Musk
"Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you"
“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” – Tony Hsieh

Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

Albert Einstein

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Christopher Morley

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.

Richard Branson

You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.

Steve Case

At its core, entrepreneurship is about capital. Also read our 200 Money Quotes and Sayings for more thoughts on cash and how people use it.

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Robert H. Schuller

It’s more effective to do something valuable than to hope a logo or name will say it for you.

Jason Cohen

Ignore the hype of the startups that you see in the press. Mostly, it’s a pack of lies. Half of these startups will be dead in a year. So, focus on building your business so you can be the one left standing.

Jules Pieri

Don’t let others convince you that the idea is good when your gut tells you it’s bad.

Kevin Rose

Don’t let anyone convince you that your dream, your vision to be an entrepreneur, is something that you shouldn’t do. What often happens is that people who are well meaning, who really care for us, are afraid for us and talk us out of it.

Cathy Hughes

Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.

Drew Houston
Ryan Holmes entrepreneur quote "When in doubt, bootstrap"
“When in doubt, bootstrap.” – Ryan Holmes

When in doubt, bootstrap. Using your own personal resources is the easiest way to start a business. You don’t have to convince investors about the merits of your idea. You just have to convince yourself.

Ryan Holmes

Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever

Noah Everett

Don’t you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct.

Barbara Corcoran

Dream big. Start small. But most of all, start.

Simon Sinek

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Mark Zuckerberg

You don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well.

Tim Cook

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Abraham Lincoln

We hope these entrepreneur quotes have you ready to stay the course with your ideas, or even inspire you to blaze a new trail. If you have the right characteristics, the entrepreneurial life may be for you!

With the right mindset, you can turn obstacles into opportunities, and opportunities into businesses. If you feel like you’re cut out for this kind of journey, get out there and give it a try!

Photo of author

Quincy Seale

Quincy is KIM's editor, and has collected and shared inspiring quotes and stories since 2005. Quincy holds an MBA from the University of Dundee and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and lives in San Antonio with his wife Natalie, son Alex, and his dog Oban.