Hard work quotes: 75 real quotes about effort, grit and rest

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison, inventor

Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the result of hard work.

Booker T. Washington, educator

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

Elbert Hubbard, writer

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams, letter writer

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Joshua Reynolds, painter

Our labour preserves us from three great evils: weariness, vice, and want.

Voltaire, writer

Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't.

Angela Duckworth, psychologist

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work.

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and writer

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.

Leonardo da Vinci, artist and inventor

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.

Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist

Toil conquered the world, unrelenting toil, and want that pinches when life is hard.

Virgil, Roman poet

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.

Marie Curie, physicist and chemist

I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.

Christopher Reeve, actor

Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence.

Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet

Most of the time, it's not about having a gift. It's about having grit.

Roger Federer, tennis player

Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.

E. O. Wilson, biologist

Habit is persistence in practice.

Octavia E. Butler, science fiction writer

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer

I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

Wynton Marsalis, jazz trumpeter

I'm a firm believer in that you play the way you practice.

Larry Bird, basketball player

Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.

Plutarch, Greek biographer

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Ernest Hemingway, novelist

Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

John Ruskin, art critic

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.

Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Pearl S. Buck, novelist

Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you are undisciplined you are a slave to your moods, you are a slave to your passions.

Eliud Kipchoge, marathon runner

I hated every minute of it. But I said to myself, 'Suffer now, and live the rest of your life as a champion'.

Muhammad Ali, boxer

Everybody, they say Roberto just swings the bat and hits the ball. I work hard. No one works harder than I do. People think things come easy to me. They don't.

Roberto Clemente, baseball player

The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.

Anson Dorrance, soccer coach

Hard work is hard work. But the results of hard work are fun.

Pat Summitt, basketball coach

When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.

Ed Macauley, basketball player

I didn't get where I got on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outwork my opponents.

Roger Federer, tennis player

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself, the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us, that's where it's at.

Jesse Owens, track and field athlete

You can make all the excuses you want, but if you're not mentally tough and you're not prepared to play every night, you're not going to win.

Larry Bird, basketball player

Hard work will always get you somewhere. If you have a little talent and work very hard, then you have a shot at being a big winner.

Nadia Comăneci, gymnast

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

Richard Feynman, physicist

If somebody else thinks something that you don't believe in, just think they're wrong and you're right and keep going.

Donna Strickland, physicist

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it.

Edsger W. Dijkstra, computer scientist

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.

E. O. Wilson, biologist

With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided.

Gordon Moore, Intel co-founder

Every night I was working: grant, grant, grant. And it came back always no, no, no.

Katalin Karikó, biochemist

Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail.

Grace Hopper, computer scientist

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

Florence Nightingale, nurse and statistician

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Albert Einstein, physicist

Astronauts are taught that the best way to reduce stress is to sweat the small stuff.

Chris Hadfield, astronaut

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Richard Bach, author

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist

Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

Chuck Close, painter

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Émile Zola, novelist

I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy.

Maya Angelou, poet and memoirist

Discipline for me has always been the foundation which leaves me free to fly.

Julie Andrews, actress and singer

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

Bette Davis, actress

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

Twyla Tharp, choreographer