Ploymint

We’ve all seen that goofy cat poster with the caption “Hang in there” before. Whenever I see the tagline I think back to an almost 20-year old episode of The Simpsons in which Marge tries to get her fledgling pretzel business of the ground. “‘Hang in there, baby!'” she reads from her basement office during one hopeful scene. “You said it, kitty,” she adds, peering closer at the copyright year of 1968. “Hmm, determined or not, that cat must be long dead. That’s kind of a downer.”

It’s an easy joke, but the scene points out how flimsy many of our motivational quotes actually are. But some of them actually hold true, and while you might not want to plaster an inspirational kitty poster in your office any time soon, there’s something about a memorable quote that serves as a perpetual pick-me-up. With that in mind, read on below for our list of motivational quotes for employees. Some of them are age-old and forever relevant, and others are more recent.

Read through, hold on to your favorites, and remember: “Hang in there, baby!”

• “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
• “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Aristotle
• “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
• “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” – Teddy Roosevelt
• “I inhale the love on a bad day.” – Future
• “Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young
• “To live, is to suffer. To survive, well, that’s to find meaning in the suffer.” – DMX
• “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That’s what makes you a champion.” – Muhammad Ali
• “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. – Pablo Picasso
• “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller
• “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
• “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” – Lily Tomlin
• “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky
• “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
• “Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.” (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
• “A year from now you  may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
• “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
• “If I don’t scream, if I don’t say something then no one’s going to say anything.” – Kanye West
• “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
• “What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.” – Tim Ferriss
• “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
• “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” – Denis Waitley
• “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it.” – Rafiki (The Lion King)
• “It is not our abilities that show what we truly are… it is our choices.” – Dumbledore (Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets)

Let us know what you think of the quotes in the comment section, and keep the whole list handy for your workweek.