Inspirational Team Quotes

There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." (Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006)

There's more to life than dating the boy on the football team.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Team work makes the dream work

I don’t want anyone to hold back who they are. It’s not okay… it’s not a good thing

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.

Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.

The elegance under pressure is the result of fearlessness.

Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice.

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.

A team is built when your employees are inspired by the same vision and connected with the same goal.

Hiring is not as simple as you think. You have to make sure you are hiring somebody who is going to be a great fit in the kind of employee tribe you’re building.

Always have a 'Plan C

We need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.

The goal is not simply for you to cross the finish line, but to see how many people you can inspire to run with you.

Let's lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them—to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are.

If you can dream it up, you can team it up.

A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take them.

It is great to do what you love but greater with the great team.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Humility is not an attribute but a key to development.

My team - an actor, a drunk, and a sociopath - didn't exactly inspire confidence.

Jesus wanted to show mercy to every single person He met. He wanted to sweep them up and embrace them with His love. But because of His eternal plans for goodness, He can't always do that. I don't know why, but i believe He has a greater good than healing our temporary pain.

Service to humanity is service to God.

A star that helps another shine doesn't have to work twice as hard to light up the sky.

We can only reach the highest height, if we encourage each other.

A smile is the best way to get oneself out of a tight spot, even if it is a fake one. Surprisingly enough, everyone takes it at face value. I read that in a book." "If you keep staring at me, I'll hit you." "I only became part of your team recently when I replaced Sasuke, so I don't know everything that's going on. I don't really understand people either. But even I can tell that Naruto really loves you. Naruto's been shouldering that promise for a long time...I think he means to shoulder it for the rest of his life. I don't know what you said to him, but it's just like what's been done to me - it feels like a curse. Sasuke causes Naruto pain, but I think you do too." "Sasuke is only helping spread his darkness across the world. Letting him live will only sow the seeds of another war. He's just another criminal now. Sasuke lost all hope of coming back when his group, Akatsuki, attacked our village. Your fellow Konoha shinobi would never accept him now. Sakura's not stupid, either. She understands the position he's put us all in. That's why she came out here, to tell you herself.

It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build.

Do not be obsessed with expensive things. Instead, be obsessed with excellence. Things don't make you excellent. However, excellence will make you expensive.

It is not the absence of defensiveness that characterizes learning teams but the way defensiveness is faced

Taj Mahal was built as a team; without a team, it was a far dream.

When you fall short of your goals and dreams ask yourself is it your mindset, perspective, expectations, effort, approach, acceptance, company or a blend of these that needs to change.

You might have announced in front of the entire football team and cheerleading squad that I fictitiously liked what your hands did to me, but I just made you come with one finger, so tell me now who has the skills.

A true leader is one who creates a favourable environment to bring out the energy and ability of his team. A great leader creates more great leaders, and does not reduce the institution to a single person.

Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.

There is no need to tell someone how to do his job if you have properly trained your team

Good becomes better by playing against better, but better doesn't become the best by playing against good.

Before you start anything, you need to know why you’re doing it. Then, you have to clearly convey that to your team so they also become partners in your vision.

The strength of every individual is the grace for great work.

You have ten minutes,” he told me. “Ten minutes to think about what you did wrong and how bad you feel right now. Are you ready?” He’d actually clicked a button on his watch and timed me, and for those ten minutes I brooded and sulked and wallowed in humiliation. I remembered the errors I’d made on the field and corrected them in my head. I imagined punching every player on the opposing team square in the mouth. And then Dad told me my time was up. “There. It’s over now,” he said. “Now you look forward and figure out how you’re going to get better.

If you’re not certain of the value of mentorship, think of how many elite athletes or professional sports teams train without a coach. Zero. How many of your favorite films are made without a producer or director? Zero. How many of the best schools in the world function without teachers? Zero. It’s safe to say that every great leader, in any field, first had a great mentor. Finding a mentor who inspires and guides your growth is a life-changing experience. Mentors help us to transcend the limits, or perceived limits, of our abilities. A mentor can be anyone who teaches us and helps us to grow in ways we couldn’t have on our own.

Be a team player, not a bandwagon jumper.

Few teams sometimes fails miserably because team members wish to work in the team but they want to be recognized individualy.

Patriotism is a thing difficult to put into words. It is neither precisely an emotion nor an opinion, nor a mandate, but a state of mind -- a reflection of our own personal sense of worth, and respect for our roots. Love of country plays a part, but it's not merely love. Neither is it pride, although pride too is one of the ingredients. Patriotism is a commitment to what is best inside us all. And it's a recognition of that wondrous common essence in our greater surroundings -- our school, team, city, state, our immediate society -- often ultimately delineated by our ethnic roots and borders... but not always. Indeed, these border lines are so fluid... And we do not pay allegiance as much as we resonate with a shared spirit. We all feel an undeniable bond with the land where we were born. And yet, if we leave it for another, we grow to feel a similar bond, often of a more complex nature. Both are forms of patriotism -- the first, involuntary, by birth, the second by choice. Neither is less worthy than the other. But one is earned.

When efforts that are wisely executed, the situation and condition don't affect the performance.

We weren't born to create excuses, we were born to create excellence.

The innovative leader has to be an arsonist and a firefighter.

When a great team loses through complacency, it will constantly search for new and more intricate explanations to explain away defeat. After a while it becomes more innovative in thinking up how to lose than thinnking up how to win.

As a leader your job is to do everything in your power to create the perfect conditions for success by benching your ego and inspiring your team to play the game the right way. But at some point, you need to let go and turn yourself over to the basketball gods. The soul of success is surrendering to what is.

A leader must inspire or his team will expire.

A leader has a great duty. You have to perform beyond the expectation of the people.

If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want.

What makes the teamwork effective is Cooperation which makes the team 'WORKS'.

In the marathon of life, there is no finish line.

If you have a dream, first build a team.

Develop a Plan for Personal Growth Success is something you attract by the person you become. —Jim Rohn

May we unite in our diverse pursuits to create a peaceful world.

One note does not make a symphony; one artist does not make an orchestra.

You will never get the best out of anyone professionally unless you understand what motivates and makes them tick personally - as a human being

Some problems are imaginary and not real.

Leaders prioritize what they want.

How one treats another one, determines success.

Actions undertaken in anger, only result in pain, sorrow, and regret.

Conflicts are expensive.

Compromise makes relationships survive.

Change is constant.

Time well-spent is life well-lived.

Good times don’t last and bad times don’t stay forever.

Relationships are built on trust.

Sometimes, changing circumstances also changes relationships.

When your pain gets tough, your game needs to get rough.

With a decision and a defined purpose, you can begin work.

Do all the work you while you still have strength.

Humbleness and enthusiasm are two great qualities for effective leadership. By aligning your 114 chakras, you can unleash your inner fire and inspire your team to achieve greatness.

A true Leader does not point fingers A true Leader does not assign blame A true Leader does not celebrate the mistakes of others A true Leader points you in the right direction A true Leader assigns praise however meager the task A true Leader celebrates the accomplishments of his team I true Leader Leads.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. The

Understand that even if you hate your body, your body loves you. Your body fought for you to keep you alive and breathing every single day, so please stop fighting your body. You are on the same team.

Those who have an opportunity to work in organizations that treat them like human beings to be protected rather than a resource to be exploited come home at the end of the day with an intense feeling of fulfillment and gratitude. This should be the rule for all of us, not the exception. Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.

Leading people is about communicating a mission and then letting them take part in it. If you want to motivate a colleague, empower a team, or inspire a friend, all you have to do is figure out how to give them ownership.

Business is all about people, Miss Steele, and I’m very good at judging people. I know how they tick, what makes them flourish, what doesn’t, what inspires them, and how to incentivize them. I employ an exceptional team, and I reward them well.

Every bone in my body was crying out for rest, but I knew if I stopped, and perhaps slept, I would die. I had to keep going. It was strange, but the thirst which was killing me was also the driving force keeping me on this long, desperate march.

Heartless reality does not grant humans the lifespan necessary to master every specialty of science, so no one genius in his secret lab can really bring robots, mutants, and clones into the world at his mad whim--it takes a team, masses of funds, and decades. But one man can love all sciences, even if he cannot wield them, and he can inspire children with the model of the mad genius, even if he cannot live it.

Teams bring together a broader mix of skills that exceed those of any single individual. 2. Teams jointly develop and strive toward clear goals. 3. Teams can adjust with greater speed and effectiveness. 4. Trust and confidence are more easily built in teams.

If you can dream it up. You can team it up.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

Every great thing that has been accomplished, and is yet to be accomplished, starts with a dream.

If you are not a part of the solution then you must be part of the problem. I am done with problems here!

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow after Commencement and leave this place. “It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four A.M. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went , we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Fruit fly scientists, God bless ‘em, are the big exceptions. Morgan’s team always picked sensibly descriptive names for mutant genes, like ‘speck,’ ‘beaded,’ ‘rudimentary,’ ‘white,’ and ‘abnormal.’ And this tradition continues today, as the names of most fruit fly genes eschew jargon and even shade whimsical… The ‘turnip’ gene makes flies stupid. ‘Tudor’ leaves males (as with Henry VIII) childless. ‘Cleopatra’ can kill flies when it interacts with another gene, ‘asp.’ ‘Cheap date’ leaves flies exceptionally tipsy after a sip of alcohol… And thankfully, this whimsy with names has inspired the occasional zinger in other areas of genetics… The backronym for the “POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic” gene in mice—‘pokemon’—nearly provoked a lawsuit, since the ‘pokemon’ gene (now known, sigh, as ‘zbtb7’) contributes to the spread of cancer, and the lawyers for the Pokemon media empire didn’t want their cute little pocket monsters confused with tumors.

You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in ‘75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already written for want of parchment.

Inspired in part by Steinhardt, Nygren conducts a “devil’s advocate review” before buying any stock. One analyst on his team presents the bullish case. Another is tasked with “putting together the strongest bearish case.… By better understanding what we’re betting against, we’re more likely to make the right decision.

Here's what we're gonna do. You're going to give me that doubt. You're just going to hand it to me, and I'm going to hold it for you. I'm going to keep it for as long as you need me to. For the rest of our lives. I will be your safe place. The place you get to be soft. Right here, just like this. When you leave my arms, you leave whole. Because you already are. You're not broken sweetie, you're human. You're incredibly strong. You're a wonder. You'll return to your team as the warrior you've always been. And you'll know that at any time, you can come to me, and you'll know my arms are strong enough." Sigh

Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hardworking, brilliant, creative and unified. But the person supervising is also responsible for someone troubled, who is performing poorly, elsewhere. In a fit of inspiration, the well-meaning manager moves that problematic person into the midst of his stellar team, hoping to improve him by example. What happens?—and the psychological literature is clear on this point.64 Does the errant interloper immediately straighten up and fly right? No. Instead, the entire team degenerates. The newcomer remains cynical, arrogant and neurotic. He complains. He shirks. He misses important meetings. His low-quality work causes delays, and must be redone by others. He still gets paid, however, just like his teammates. The hard workers who surround him start to feel betrayed. “Why am I breaking myself into pieces striving to finish this project,” each thinks, “when my new team member never breaks a sweat?” The same thing happens when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability.65 Down is a lot easier than up.

Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.

There are too many famous Steve Jobs anecdotes to count, but several of them revolve around one theme: his unwillingness to leave well enough alone. His products had to be perfect; they had to do what they promised, and then some. And even though deadlines loomed and people would have to work around the clock, he would regularly demand more from his teams than they thought they could provide. The result? The most successful company in the history of the world and products that inspire devotion that is truly unusual for a personal computer or cell phone.

I personally believe mavericks are people who write their own rulebook. They are the ones who act first and talk later. They are fiercely independent thinkers who know how to fight the lizard brain (to use Seth Godin’s term). I don’t believe many are born, rather they are products of an environment, or their experiences. They are usually the people that find the accepted norm does not meet their requirements and have the self-confidence, appetite, independence, degree of self reliance and sufficient desire to carve out their own niche in life. I believe a maverick thinker can take a new idea, champion it, and push it beyond the ability of a normal person to do so. I also believe the best mavericks can build a team, can motivate with their vision, their passion, and can pull together others to accomplish great things. A wise maverick knows that they need others to give full form to their views and can gather these necessary contributors around them. Mavericks, in my experience, fall into various categories – a/ the totally off-the-wall, uncontrollable genius who won’t listen to anyone; b/ the person who thinks that they have the ONLY solution to a challenge but prepared to consider others’ views on how to conquer the world &, finally, the person who thinks laterally to overcome problems considered to be irresolvable. I like in particular the third category. The upside is that mavericks, because of their different outlook on life, often sees opportunities and solutions that others cannot. But the downside is that often, because in life there is always some degree of luck in success (i.e. being in the right place at the right time), mavericks that fail are often ridiculed for their unorthodox approach. However when they succeed they are acclaimed for their inspiration. It is indeed a fine line they walk in life.

Fulfillment is a right and not a privilege. Every single one of us is entitled to feel fulfilled by the work we do, to wake up feeling inspired to go to work, to feel safe when we’re there and to return home with a sense that we contributed to something larger than ourselves. Fulfillment is not a lottery. It is not a feeling reserved for a lucky few who get to say, “I love what I do.” For those who hold a leadership position, creating an environment in which the people in your charge feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves is your responsibility as a leader.

Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew George Gipp. He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy."

Re-imagined or reinterpreted source material offers unique perspectives into the creative process. I like hearing a band cover another band’s tune. I dig seeing multiple interpretations of a Shakespearean play. I’m inspired by reading a creative team’s successful take on the origin of Superman. Sometimes the remakes can surprise us, sometimes they’re tired, and sometimes they fail, but they are almost always enlightening. I root for the success of a remake. A remake can breathe new life into something forgotten. I want to see something bad turned into something good or something good turned into something phenomenal.

All A players have six common denominators. They have a scoreboard that tells them if they are winning or losing and what needs to be done to change their performance. They will not play if they can’t see the scoreboard. They have a high internal, emotional need to succeed. They do not need to be externally motivated or begged to do their job. They want to succeed because it is who they are . . . winners. People often ask me how I motivate my employees. My response is, “I hire them.” Motivation is for amateurs. Pros never need motivating. (Inspiration is another story.) Instead of trying to design a pep talk to motivate your people, why not create a challenge for them? A players love being tested and challenged. They love to be measured and held accountable for their results. Like the straight-A classmate in your high school geometry class, an A player can hardly wait for report card day. C players dread report card day because they are reminded of how average or deficient they are. To an A player, a report card with a B or a C is devastating and a call for renewed commitment and remedial actions. They have the technical chops to do the job. This is not their first rodeo. They have been there, done that, and they are technically very good at what they do. They are humble enough to ask for coaching. The three most important questions an employee can ask are: What else can I do? Where can I get better? What do I need to do or learn so that I continue to grow? If you have someone on your team asking all three of these questions, you have an A player in the making. If you agree these three questions would fundamentally change the game for your team, why not enroll them in asking these questions? They see opportunities. C players see only problems. Every situation is asking a very simple question: Do you want me to be a problem or an opportunity? Your choice. You know the job has outgrown the person when all you hear are problems. The cost of a bad employee is never the salary. My rules for hiring and retaining A players are: Interview rigorously. (Who by Geoff Smart is a spectacular resource on this subject.) Compensate generously. Onboard effectively. Measure consistently. Coach continuously.