134 Short Hard Work Quotes for Daily Motivation
Sometimes, hard work feels overwhelming, but anything worth achieving requires focus and determination—and it’s always worth it.
If you’re looking for motivation to push through and stay committed, these short hard work quotes are exactly what you need.
Whether you’re looking for something motivational, funny, or inspiring, this collection is perfect for women ready to hustle.
They say it takes roughly 10,000 hours to master a skill or 28 days of consistency to form a habit.
So, whether it’s tackling your endless to-do list, chasing your big dreams, or quieting that little voice inside saying, “One day I will…”—remember, it takes time, dedication, and a lot of hard work.
Keep scrolling to find your favorite quote.
Our Favorite Short Hard Work Quotes
“Nothing will work unless you do.” Maya Angelou
“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.” Margaret Thatcher
“If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.” James A. Garfield
“Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Alva Edison
“Sometimes there’s not a better way. Sometimes there’s only the hard way.” — Mary E. Pearson
“With hard work and effort, you can achieve anything.” — Antoine Griezmann
“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” — Gordon B. Hinckley
“Work harder than you think you did yesterday.” — Alex Elle
“A lot of hard work is hidden behind nice things.” — Ralph Lauren
“I work hard. But I play hard, too.” — Pitbull
“If you train hard, you’ll not only be hard; you’ll be hard to beat.” — Herschel Walker
“Go and get your things. Dreams mean work.” — Paolo Coelho
“I never took a day off in my 20s. Not one.” — Bill Gates
“There’s no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession.” — Conor McGregor
“Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.” — Lowell Thomas
“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser
“A sign of a hard worker is one who works without complaint.” — Sarah Price
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” — Beverly Sills
“Work hard. Play hard. Be kind.” — Harry Styles
“Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.” — Virat Kohil
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho
“It’s not about money or connections – it’s the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone.” — Mark Cuban
“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” — Peter F. Drucker
“If you want to achieve some really big and interesting goals, you have to learn to fall in love with hard work.” Steve Pavlina
“Hard work is painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love.” Steve Pavlina
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” Vince Lombardi
“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” Gordon B. Hinckley
“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” Booker T. Washington
“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” Sam Ewing
“Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren’t sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.” John Carmack
“Hard work pays off – hard work beats talent any day, but if you’re talented and work hard, it’s hard to be beat.” Robert Griffin III
“Hard work opens doors and shows the world that you are serious about being one of those rare – and special – human beings who use the fullness of their talents to do their very best.” Robin S. Sharma
“Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.” Horace
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” Babe Ruth
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.” Jim Rohn
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” Michelangelo Buonarroti
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” Jimmy Johnson
“The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Work is the key to success, and hard work can help you accomplish anything.” Vince Lombardi
“No one ever drowned in sweat.” U.S. Marine Corps
“Do not let your good ideas to spend your brain energy, do it with all the effort because the shadow of the success can become a reality only with hard work.” Isra
“You can’t have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic.” unknown
“God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.” J.G. Holland
“Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.” Edward H. Harriman
“I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.” Larry Bird
“Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own arm.” Sidney J. Phillips
“The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves” Garth Henrichs
“There’s nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing anyway.” Mark Burnett
“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.” Robert Townsend
“All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” — Michael John Bobak
“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No Excuses.” — Kobe Bryant
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” — Abraham Lincoln
“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” — Jim Rohn
“The future depends on what you do today.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” — Confucius
“I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” — Estee Lauder
“Winners embrace hard work. They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win. Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment. And that’s the difference.” — Lou Holtz
“Hard work is an essential element in tracking down and perfecting a strategy or in executing it.” — Charlie Munger
“Work and you’ll get what you need; work harder and you’ll get what you want.” — Prabakaran Thirumalai
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off.” — Sam Altman
“Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.” — Patrick Suskind
“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.” — Sam Ewing
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” — Olin Miller
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” — Stephen King
“It takes struggle, a goal and enthusiasm to make a champion.” Norman Vincent Peale
“Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.” H. Jackson Brown
“Hard work is the yeast that raises the dough.” unknown
“I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.” Charles Evans Hughes
“The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished.” Anonymous
“There are few things that you can’t do as long as you are willing to apply yourself.” Greg LeMond
“There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.” Madam C.J. Walker
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.” Newt Gingrich
“Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.” James Ling
“Initiative is key. Anybody who wants to be somebody is going to work as hard as they can to fulfill that dream.” unknown
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” Pearl S. Buck
“To succeed, work hard, never give up and above all, cherish a magnificent obsession.” — Walt Disney
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” — Albert Einstein
“When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option. It’s a necessity.” — Steve Pavlina
“Don’t work for recognition but do work worthy of recognition.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” — Denis Waitley
“Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.” — G.K. Neilson
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” — Frank Lloyd Wright
“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” — Booker T. Washington
“I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.” — Margaret Thatcher
“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” — Bobby Unser
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
“When it comes to success, there are no shortcuts.” — Bo Bennett
“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” — Gen. George Patton
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” — Maya Angelou
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill
“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit.” — Conrad Hilton
“The key to success is to develop a winning edge.” — Brian Tracy
“You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.” — Dale Carnegie
“Your attitude is either the lock on or key to your door of success.” — Denis Waitley
“If you want to be successful, find out what the price is and then pay it.” — Scott Adam
“The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows.” — Aristotle Onassis
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” — Earl Nightingale
“If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.” — Malcolm X
“Success is a journey, not a destination.” — Arthur Ashe
“Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.” Robert Half
“Hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but improves its chances.” B. J. Gupta
“We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead.” William James
“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” Calvin Coolidge
“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Peter Drucker
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” Abraham Lincoln
“We all have a path to take; sometimes it’s hidden under the weeds, so you might have to work a little.” Mike Dolan
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.” Margaret Thatcher
Motivational Quotes About Hard Work
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.” — Gen. Colin Powell
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic. It takes sweat, determination, and hard work.” — Kevin-Prince Boateng
“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.” — David Bly
“Believe in yourself, work hard, work smart and passionately present your best self to the world.” — Hill Harper
“There is no substitute for hard work.” — Thomas A. Edison
“The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.” — Dwayne Johnson
“With hard work and dedication, anything is possible.” — Timothy Weah
“Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” — Ann Landers
“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” — Margaret Mead
“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” — Harry Golden
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” — Jimmy Johnson
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” — Henry Ford
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King
“There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as an overnight success or easy money.” — Henry Sy
“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” — Colin Powell
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Vidal Sassoon
“There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.” — Roger Staubach
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” — William Butler Yeats
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” — Robert Collier
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” — Albert Einstein
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.” — Ralph Marston
