There might be something a little embarrassing about saying that a coffee mug saying changed the way you dealt with a tough week. It’s easy to see why people roll their eyes at motivational quotes. They are all over the internet, scrawled and stuck on top of stock photos of mountain peaks and sunrises. If you take away the noise of style, though, many of them have something real to them. Something that could only be learned through years of experience.
It wasn’t a big deal when Arthur Ashe said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” There’s no promise of change right away. But that line sounds different on a Tuesday afternoon when a project has failed and starting over seems like too much to ask. Some people think that these words stick because they don’t try to sell too much.
Many people think that motivational quotes are not very deep and are like fast food for your mind. But if you look more closely, many of them are hard-won insights boiled down. One thing that Florence Nightingale said made her successful was that “I never gave or took any excuse.” This is something that most modern offices could not even imagine. That is not a basic truth. That will be disciplined. She was in charge of field hospitals during the war. She deserved that sentence.
Motivation at work changes all the time. It goes up and down with the season, the team, the deadline, and the manager. When a project won’t move forward or when you miss a goal that seemed attainable two months ago, most people who have had a job for more than a year know that feeling of low-grade dread. When that happens, the right words can help like a reset button. Not magic. Just a change in how you see things is all it takes to move forward one more step.
Some of the most memorable quotes come from places you might not expect them to. Helen Keller’s whole life was a lesson in sticking with something even when it seemed impossible. She told us, “Alone we can do so little.” We can do a lot when we work together. Because it’s been used in so many team-building slideshows, it might start to lose its use. But if you think about where it came from, the meaning comes back.
No matter what you think of Steve Jobs, he was great at saying things that a lot of people feel but can’t quite put into words. “You don’t need to be pushed if you are working on something you care about.” You are drawn to the vision. Beating up someone or pulling someone is two very different feelings that most people have had at least once. Obviously, the goal is more of the second. A different, tougher question is whether that’s something that every job can do.
Aristotle added something deceptively simple to the body of literature on how to motivate people at work: “We are what we repeatedly do.” That’s why excellence is a habit, not an act. You can understand this kind of observation better as you age. Talent is real, but you can’t always count on it. Being consistent, showing up, and doing the little things with care tend to add up in ways that raw talent alone doesn’t.
Maya Angelou knew both struggle and creativity better than most people. “You might run out of ideas.” You have more than you use. It goes against how most people think about energy at work, which is as something limited that needs to be used wisely. It’s worth thinking about that creative work might actually increase capacity instead of decreasing it. This is especially true for people who make things for a living.
There’s also something to be said for quotes that don’t shout. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started” by Mark Twain has been around for more than one hundred years because it talks about something that will always be true: being stuck before taking action. Not because of a lack of skills or money. Inertia is all. It’s still not clear if reading a quote breaks that habit for most people or if it’s just something that makes them feel better. Most likely both, it depends on the day.
The best quotes here aren’t how to do something. They serve as reminders. People have done hard things before and found ways to get through them. As Jimmy Johnson once said, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is “that little extra.” That’s not nothing. If you wake up at the right time, it might be enough.
