When researching a Master of Business Administration or trying to decide what your next career move is, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Running or helping to run a successful business isn’t for the weak-minded. It takes determination and a great deal of confidence. But when planning out your career, it’s important to keep your end goal in mind. Don’t focus on the classes or the requirements, but on what your job, and your life, will look like once you’ve earned your degree.

Here are 15 inspiring quotes from successful entrepreneurs, public speakers, journalists and politicians who once stood in your shoes.

1. “Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning” ― Robert S. McNamara
2. “You are not your resume, you are your work.” ― Seth Godin
3. “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” ― Warren Buffett
4. “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” ― Richard Branson
5. “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.” ― David Rockefeller
6. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” ― Sam Walton
7. “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.” ― Colin Powell
8. “Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.” ― Warren G. Bennis
9. “FORGIVE FAILURE. The corollary to accountability is forgiveness. Things go wrong all the time in relationships, and the healthiest ones move on from them, leaving behind grudges and blame. This is not to say that failure is accepted; rather, that it is acknowledged and understood.” ― Charlene Li
10. “It’s not ‘What do I want to do?’, it’s ‘What kind of life do I want to have?’” ― Arianna Huffington
11. “Entrepreneurship is hard. You have to be at peace with failure and keep moving.” ― Heidi Roizen
12. “An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true.” ― Vinod Khosla
13. “When you are competing with others on their terms, you're likely to lose.” – Dorie Clark
14. “Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.” ― Mark Cuban
15. “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” ― Rupert Murdoch

To learn more about our Master of Business Administration program, contact one of our admissions counselors today.