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100 Inspirational Business and Leadership Quotes

Some of the very best business executives, startup founders, venture capitalists, management thought leaders, and bestselling authors regularly share words of wisdom on Twitter.
Vala Afshar
By 

Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce

Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce
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Some of the very best business executives, startup founders, venture capitalists, management thought leaders, and bestselling authors regularly share words of wisdom on Twitter. Here are a 100 inspirational business leadership quotes for you to enjoy and share on Twitter:

  1. Having a great idea is important. But having a great team is also important. — @SteveCase [tweet this]

  • Too little confidence, and you're unable to act; too much confidence, and you're unable to hear. — @johnmaeda [tweet this]

  • My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing. — @pmarca [tweet this]

  • It's about getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment & helping to find a way to innovate. — @marissamayer [tweet this]

  • All success is a matter of implementation. All implementation is a matter of politics. — @tom_peters [tweet this]

  • If there’s a 90% chance of failure, there’s a 10% chance of changing the world. — @vkhosla [tweet this]

  • When you have self-esteem, you give yourself the audacity to dream big. — @garyvee [tweet this]

  • In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders. — @sherylsandberg [tweet this]

  • Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect. — @jack [tweet this]

  • The secret to thriving in the future is 'learning to learn'. — @dorieclark [tweet this]

  • No business plan survives first contact with a customer. — @sgblank [tweet this]

  • If you're waiting for encouragement from others, you're doing it wrong. By the time people think an idea is good, it's too late. — @levie [tweet this]

  • What makes the meaning of life is people; try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. — @reidhoffman [tweet this]

  • You’re more likely to drown in the sea of sameness than get eaten by a shark while navigating new waters. — @AmyJoMartin [tweet this]

  • Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change. — @tom_peters [tweet this]

  • The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy. — Jeff Bezos [tweet this]

  • Entrepreneurs are alwasy super optimistic. If they weren't they wouldn't be entrepreneurs. — @HeidiRoizen [tweet this]

  • Succinct doesn't mean short. It means a high ratio of ideas to words. — @paulg [tweet this]

  • Opportunity-based narratives + creation spaces based on mutual trust = sustainable movements. — @jhagel [tweet this]

  • Definition of success: 1 well-being 2 wisdom 3 capacity to celebrate life 4 our ability to give back — @ariannahuff [tweet this]

  • Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — @warrenbuffett [tweet this]

  • Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. — @BillGates [tweet this]

  • People who are just passionate about money do not generally make the best entrepreneurs. — @msuster [tweet this]

  • Never try to be a thought leader. There's no value in that. Instead, try to add value. — @chrisbrogan [tweet this]

  • Are the jobs, pains and gains of your customers really there? Ask you customers and iterate appropriately. — @AlexOsterwalder [tweet this]

  • Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. — @claychristensen [tweet this]

  • To succeed in business you need to be original, but you also need to understand what your customers want. — @richardbranson [tweet this]

  • Get specific sooner: a specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the reverse, yet we often give generalizations. — @KareAnderson [tweet this]

  • To build a great business, you have to shoot to be 10 times better than your competition. — @bill_gross [tweet this]

  • Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing a leader can do. — @jack_welch [tweet this]

  • You can't out-spend the giants, but you can out-think, out-teach, and out-help them. — @bhalligan [tweet this]

  • Part of company culture is path-dependent—it's the lessons you learn along the way. — Jeff Bezos [tweet this]

  • Great tech founder/CEOs tend to focus on What & Who: What product to build, and Who to hire/train/retain/motivate to build it. — @pmarca [tweet this]

  • It takes as much mental energy to dream small as to dream big, so you might as well dream big. — @RosabethKanter [tweet this]

  • Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. — @johnmaeda [tweet this]

  • The idea of an entrepreneur is really thinking out of the box and taking risks and stepping up to major challenges. — @SteveCase [tweet this]

  • Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to. — @richardbranson [tweet this]

  • Do what is necessary to be resilient. You will get knocked down. What matters is that you get back up. — @HillaryClinton [tweet this]

  • You get in life what you have the courage to ask for. — @oprah [tweet this]

  • The creative leader always questions authority. Even when it is her/his own. — @johnmaeda [tweet this]

  • Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company it will be invincible. — @richardbranson [tweet this]

  • Innovation in tech favors the naive and the stubborn. If you are too rational you won't tackle problems that others once failed at. —@levie [tweet this]

  • Entrepreneurship is hard. You have to be at peace with failure and keep moving. — @HeidiRoizen [tweet this]

  • Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence, making sure that impact lasts in your absence. — @sherylsandberg [tweet this]

  • Luck favors the people who are willing to grind it out. — @GuyKawasaki [tweet this]

  • An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. — @jack_welch [tweet this]

  • Success is not a straight line, it’s much more of a dance and being open to possibilities. — @ariannahuff [tweet this]

  • Successful companies proactively re-invent themselves. — @AlexOsterwalder [tweet this]

  • What good is having a belly if there's no fire in it. Wake up, drink your passion, light a match, and get to work. —@simonsinek [tweet this]

  • An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true. — @vkhosla [tweet this]

  • Employees who strengths were called on every day are 50% more likely to be on high-retention teams. —@mwbuckingham [tweet this]

  • Don't let anything (or anyone) rent space in your mind for free. It's valuable real estate. — @AmyJoMartin [tweet this]

  • Better to be an optimist who gets disappointed than a pessimist who has no hope. — @_robin_sharma [tweet this]

  • When you are competing with others on their terms, you're likely to lose. — @dorieclark [tweet this]

  • Communication is the foundation of collaborative work, which is how all important problems gets solved. People working together. — @pmarca [tweet this]

  • If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care. — @garyvee [tweet this]

  • You only and always have three choices in any situation: change, accept or leave. — @KareAnderson [tweet this]

  • There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. — @susancain [tweet this]

  • A leader isn’t good because they’re right; they’re good because they’re willing to learn and to trust. — @StanMcChrystal [tweet this]

  • Don’t be a jerk. Don’t take anyone for granted. Enjoy the moment. Be honest, always. Be humble. Be kind. Respect people’s wishes. — @jack [tweet this]

  • Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter. — @marissamayer [tweet this]

  • If the challenge we face doesn't scare us, then it's probably not that important. — @simonsinek [tweet this]

  • Awesome people don't like average goals. — @dharmesh [tweet this]

  • Most harmful form of exercise: jumping to conclusions. — @RosabethKanter [tweet this]

  • At the end of the day, the team you build is the company you build. — @SteveCase [tweet this]

  • People who can focus, get things done. People who can prioritize, get the right things done. — @johnmaeda [tweet this]

  • Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. — @HillaryClinton [tweet this]

  • If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late. — @reidhoffman [tweet this]

  • Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the question the answer has nowhere to go. — @claychristensen [tweet this]

  • Honesty is a very expensive gift, don't expect it from cheap people. — @WarrenBuffett [tweet this]

  • Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it. — @amyjccuddy [tweet this]

  • Everyone has an idea. But it's really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea. — @jack [tweet this]

  • You don’t just drift into better behavior. You have to be intentional and deliberate. — @nilofer [tweet this]

  • A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader. — @fredwilson [tweet this]

  • What ideas are widely dismissed today due to having been tried and failed? Answer is the codex to the next 20 years. — @pmarca [tweet this]

  • People who do extraordinary things are driven by the problems that they're trying to solve. — @msuster [tweet this]

  • When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others. — @jack_welch [tweet this]

  • Do you know what we call a failed entrepreneur in Silicon Valley? Experienced. — @sgblank [tweet this]

  • In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is a matter of miscasting. — @mwbuckingham [tweet this]

  • When you start with what's at stake for the buyer, you earn the right to their attention. — @jakesorofman [tweet this]

  • If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. — Colin Powell [tweet this]

  • One if the hardest things in life to learn are which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn. — @Oprah [tweet this]

  • If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. — @sirkenrobinson [tweet this]

  • Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage. — @BreneBrown [tweet this]

  • Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure. — @StanMcChrystal [tweet this]

  • For any startup advice, ask yourself: Is the advice on how to succeed, or how not to fail? They're not the same thing! — @pmarca [tweet this]

  • Stories are what help us turn a brand promise, into a point of view, into a narrative that soars. — @jakesorofman [tweet this]

  • As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. — @BillGates [tweet this]

  • Sometimes our assumptions are screaming so loudly we can't hear the truth. — @_robin_sharma [tweet this]

  • Genius is a function of *communities* of people. Those that add, subtract, challenge and execute. — @nilofer [tweet this]

  • If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. — @KareAnderson [tweet this]

  • Your probability of success is proportional to number of people that want you to succeed. Work to keep increasing that number. — @dharmesh [tweet this]

  • Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that's really powerful. — @reidhoffman [tweet this]

  • You have to fight through some bad days to earn the best days of your life. — @LollyDaskal [tweet this]

  • Getting something wrong does not mean you have failed. Instead, you have just learned what does not work. — @claychristensen [tweet this]

  • You beat burnout by knowing what it is you're giving up that makes you resentful. — @MarissaMayer [tweet this]

  • You can't manage creativity. You need to manage for creativity. You need to create the space for it to emerge. — @ariannahuff [tweet this]

  • I'm here to build something for the long-term. Anything else is a distraction. — Mark Zuckerberg [tweet this]

  • Other people's judgments do not have to be your judgments. — @dorieclark [tweet this]

  • Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you. — @mcuban [tweet this]

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