Top 30 Most Inspiring Project Management Quotes of 2019

Whenever it comes to managing projects, every team requires some sort of motivation to get going and to stay on track.

It's quite human to lose focus when you're faced with unrealistic deadlines (let's just admit, deadlines are always unrealistic — well, most of the times) and an impending fear of failure. It's at this point that you need a solid shot of inspiration to instantly regain your focus.

Each one of us has our own way of getting inspired. For some, inspiration is derived from peers, influencers, or inspirational podcasts, while some others (like us) turn to famous project management quotes to get their daily dose of inspiration.

If you're someone who always looks up to famous people and their sayings, look no further as we've sieved through hundreds of top project management quotes and cherry-picked the classics for you to stay productive.

Enjoy!

1. Project Planning

One of the first steps of starting any project is devising a powerful project plan. The significance of a project plan is evident from these sayings:

"Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning." — Winston Churchill

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." — Peter Drucker

"Have a good plan. Execute it violently. Do it today." — General Douglas McArthur

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." — Mike Tyson

"It's a bad plan that admits of no modification." — Publilius Syrus

2. Team Communication

Effective communication plays a key role when it comes to dealing with excessive layers of project details, information exchange, and decisions that need to be timely implemented. These quotes illustrate how important communication is for projects:

"Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them toward a certain goal." — Walt Disney

"As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people's ideas are often better than your own." — Amy Poehler

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." — George Bernard Shaw

"Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know." — Jim Rohn

3. Teamwork

Teams just don't work without teamwork and the following project management quotes prove it:

"In teamwork, silence isn't golden, it's deadly." — Mark Sanborn

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself." — Henry Ford

"Individual commitment to a group effort-that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." — Vince Lombardi

"None of us is as smart as all of us." — Ken Blanchard

4. Failure

Projects fail. At one point or another during your project, you will be faced with failures and that's when you need these quotes to get back on track:

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." — Henry Ford

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" — Winston Churchill

"There are no failures — just experiences and your reactions to them." — Tom Krause

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." — Kim Robinson

5. Project Management

Now putting out some perspectives about the discipline itself:

"No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the same staff that started it." — Edwards, Butler, Hill, and Russell

"No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we're not solving the right problem, the project fails." — Woody Williams

"Operations keep the lights on, strategy provides the light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward" — Joy Gumz

"A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it." — Scott Allen

6. Deadlines

What are projects without deadlines? Deadlines that are a nightmare for most of the project managers, play an important role in mapping out the project timeline and deciding the next course of action. How critical deadlines are can be understood from these quotes:

"Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed." — Peter Drucker

"There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic deadlines." — Brian Tracy

"Beware the time-driven project with an artificial deadline." — Michael S. Dobson

"How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time." — Frederick Brooks

7. Humorous/Funny

Project management doesn't always have to be serious, and we have some funny project management quotes on the matter to prove us right.

"If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what's going on." — Edward Murphy

"We build systems like the Wright brothers built the airplanes; build the whole thing, push it off a cliff, let it crash and start all over again." — R. M. Graham

Funny Project Management Quotes and Comics by Dilbert

Love comics by Dilbert? We do too! Here are 3 of our top picks for Project Management quotes:

This marks the end of our compilation of top project management quotes. Let us know in the comments if they were a source of inspiration or amusement for you.