Though it is important to be independent and be able to stand on your own two feet, it is equally important to be able to work effectively when collaborating as part of a team and to acknowledge all the little ways people have helped us along the way to get to where we are now. Having a good team behind you can exponentially amplify your success in ways both wonderful and unexpected. Still, even the most cohesive and productive teams can use a bit of inspiration now and again. Here are 75 of the best inspirational team building quotes from business leaders, scientists, authors, athletes, civic leaders, and other public figures to help motivate your team during or before your next big project:
1. “A genuine leader is not a search for consensus, but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther King Jr. 
2. “A lot of people think of leadership qualities as “paternal” – qualities like being aggressive or stern. I think of them as maternal. I think the best managers have caring, empathetic personalities.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
3. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
4. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” – Michael Jordan
5. “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler
6. “It is great to do what you love but greater with a great team.” – Lailah Grifty Akita
7. “Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs
8. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” – Reid Hoffman
9. “Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it.” – Bill Bradley
10. “A leader must inspire or his team will expire.” – Orrin Woodward
11. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is a progress. Working together is a success.” – Henry Ford.
12. “If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.” – Paul W. Bryant
13. “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” -Ryunosuke Satoro
14. “Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.” – Stephen R. Covey
15. “Individual commitment to a group effort – that’s what makes a team work, a company work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
16. “Someone else’s success does not equal a failure for you.” – Joe Rogan
17. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – Harry Truman
18. “None of us is as smart as all of us.” – Ken Blanchard
19. “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang from.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
20. “The greater the loyalty of a group towards the group, the greater is the motivation among the member to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” -Rensis Likert
21. “You don’t build culture by offering free snacks or gym memberships or open seating. You build culture by talking to people one by one, and understanding what they care about. What you’ll learn is, some people want money. Some people want time with their family. Some people want a fancy title. Some people want creativity. And it’s your job to know every one of those things about every person, every single day.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
22. “It takes two flints to make a fire.” – Louisa May Alcott
23. “We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” – Benjamin Franklin
24. “Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.” – David Ogilvy
25. “With an enthusiastic team, you can achieve almost anything.” – Tahir Shah
26. “Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
27. “Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.” – Virginia Burden
28. “All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and receive help from other people.” – Alexis Carrel
29. “It’s as simple as this. When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.” – Patrick Lencioni
30. “Most people overlook the importance of being able to show emotion” – Gary Vaynerchuk
31. “Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.” – Warren Buffet
32. “Bad attitudes will ruin your team.” – Terry Bradshaw
33. “Be fast, be first, but never be alone. Nothing can replace the value of teamwork.” – Farshad Asl
34. “When you switch your focus from the ‘we’ to the ‘me’, the goal from the ‘team’ to the ‘self’, you upset the balance of the whole. Consequentially, that redistribution of effort impedes success.” – Carlos Wallace
35. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
36. “Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments towards organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie
37. “Teams share the burden and divide the grief.” – Doug Smith
38. “A great team has a good scorer with a teammate who’s on point and ready to assist.” – Kwame Alexander
39. “The secret to teamwork is an outward mindset.” – Steve Young
40. “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” – J.K. Rowling
41. “If you can laugh together, you can work together.” – Robert Orben
42. “A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind.” – Bill Bethel
43. “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.” – Aristotle
44. “In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.” – Mark Sanborn
45. “Every great athlete, artist, and aspiring being has a great team to help them flourish and succeed – personally and professionally. Even the so-called ‘solo star’ has a strong supporting cast helping them shine, thrive, and take flight.” – Rasheed Ongunlaru
46. “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” – Abraham Lincoln
47. “It is the long history of humankind, and animal-kind too, that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin
48. “The key to handling conflict is to make sure people understand it’s okay to have an opposing view.” – Eunice Parisi-Carew
49. “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” – George Shinn
50. “There is a direct correlation between positive energy and positive results in the physical form.” – Joe Rogan
51. “It might be a lot easier to take risks if you’re part of a group who will look out for one another.” – Andrew Yang
52. “If everyone is moving together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
53. “Teamwork is the best ever investment. If I make three and you make five, together we will not make eight. We will make fifteen. Leaders build active teams.” – Israelmore Ayivor
54. “Becoming more deeply connected with those you admire and love bolsters, in you, the traits you most admire in them.” – Kare Anderson
55. “The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.” – Margaret Carty
56. “When people stand together, and are prepared to fight back, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.” – Bernie Sanders
57. “Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” – Mattie Stepanek
58. “No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.” -Althea Gibson
59. “To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.” – Mike Krzyewski
60. “Regardless of how you get there, it takes empathy, self-awareness, kindness, and self-esteem to be a great leader.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
61. “There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.” – Malcolm Gladwell
62. “By working together, pooling our resources, and building on our strengths, we can accomplish great things.” – Ronald Reagan
63. “I’m a true believer in the strength of teamwork, in the power of dreams, and in the absolute necessity of a support structure.” – Julie Payette
64. “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton
65. “One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
66. “Ego is the ultimate killer on a team.” – Patrick Lencioni
67. “Teamwork, I find it fascinating that a snowflake, by itself, can be so delicate; but when they team-up, they can close down an entire city.” – Steve Maraboli
68. “Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.” – Ifeanyi Onuoha
69. “Align yourself with the right people, forge the right relationships, and you’ll set yourself up for the long run.” – Daymond John
70. “Perhaps because we know we control our own destiny, we believe, deep down inside, that working together we can make each new year better than the old.” – Ronald Reagan
71. “Work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego.” – Ellen DeGeneres
72. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock
73. “The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson
74. “You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.” – Jim Stovall
75. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth
If there is one thing evident by these inspirational team quotes, it is that whatever we may achieve in life has the capacity to be multiplied by the talents and assistance of others. Working together is not just a valuable skill, it is a necessity. Still, even the best leaders can sometimes find team building difficult and any tool at your disposal to help uplift your group can be invaluable. When building a winning team, quotes from others who have found success in life can help get you on the right track. So go out, work together, and succeed!
Bonus Team Quote: “No man is an island.” – John Donne
Though this is a rather open-ended quote, it is my personal favorite for inspiring an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork. Its vagueness allows it to be applied to a variety of situations, reminding us that we come to where we are with the help of others and sometimes the most important aspect of building a successful team is just acknowledging that simple fact.