If you don’t think planning is important, you may want to reconsider! We’ve collected 75 great inspirational quotes about the importance of planning.
- “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Edison
- “A plan is a list of actions arranged in whatever sequence is thought likely to achieve an objective.” – John Argenti
- “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
- “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
- “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing
- “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
- “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost
- “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” – Douglas H. Everett
- “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” – Peter Drucker
- “I don’t believe in failure. It’s not failure if you enjoyed the process.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “Chance favors the prepared mind.”– Louis Pasteur
- “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” – Peter F. Drucker
- “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.” – Daniel H. Burnham
- “Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.” – Margaret Thatcher
- “No plan ever failed due to good planning.” – Jury Nel
- “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” – John F. Kennedy
- “It’s not the plan that’s important, it’s the planning.” – Dr. Gramme Edwards
- “Success comes from doing the few things that matter most, not from doing everything.” – Allison Dunn
- “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” – Tom Landry
- “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “When you align daily actions with long-term goals, progress becomes inevitable.” – Allison Dunn
- “Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.”– Napoleon Hill
- “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” – Confucius
- “I ain’t Martin Luther King. I don’t need a dream. I have a plan.” – Spike Lee
- “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” – Antoine de Saint Exupery
- “The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.” – Miguel De Cervantes
- “The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done…you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do.” – Lil Wayne
- “The backbone of success is hard work, determination, good planning, and perseverance.” – Mia Hamm
- “To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream. Not only plan but also believe.” – Anatole France
- “If Plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters.” – Claire Cook
- “He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.” – Victor Hugo
- “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” – H. Stanely Judd
- “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” – Alan Lakein
- “Most business owners are doing activities, but not creating value.” – Allison Dunn
- “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “The trouble with many plans is that they are based on the way things are now. To be successful, your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have. – Nido Qubein
- “It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” – Roger von Oech
- “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” – George S. Patton
- “Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” – Indira Gandhi
- “Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Doing more is often a distraction. Thinking more is where true progress lies.” – Allison Dunn
- “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Tariq Siddique
- “I always say don’t make plans, make options.” – Jennifer Aniston
- “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
- “Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle-class plan for generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.” – Gloria Steinem
- “If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.” – Edward Everett Hale
- “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.” – Jim Rohn
- “The most valuable time you’ll ever spend in your business isn’t doing—it’s thinking.” – Allison Dunn
- “Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us.” – Richard I. Winwood
- “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” – Fitzhugh Dodson
- “A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.” – Saul Bellow
- “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Success isn’t found in doing what’s easy; it’s in doing what’s necessary.” – Allison Dunn
- “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
- “Just because you made a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” – Taylor Swift
- “Good planning without good working is nothing.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near one.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
- “The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” – Winston Churchill
- “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.” – Shannon Alder
- “Plans are things that don’t change.” – Fujio Cho
- “Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re making progress.” – Allison Dunn
- “Start from wherever you are and with whatever you’ve got.” – Jim Rohn
- “The sooner you start planning your life, the sooner you will live the life you dream of.” – Hans Glint
- “Thinking well to be wise: planning well, wiser: doing well, wisest and best of all.” – Malcom Forbes
- “Speaking from my personal experiences, setting goals, along with a detailed action plan, has actually changed my life from one cast in frustration to one of purpose.” – Catherine Pulsifer
- “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” – Confucius
- “Planning for success will make you even more creative.” – Danielle LaPorte
- “For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” – African Proverb
- “A plan that is not written, is just an idea.” – Dwain Siady
- “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Solving the wrong problem perfectly won’t get you the right result.” – Allison Dunn
- “You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.” – Harry S. Truman
- “The reason that everybody likes planning is that nobody has to do anything.” – Jerry Brown
- “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is still small.” – Sun Tzu
- “Four steps to achievement: Plan purposely. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.” – William A. Ward
- “There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.” – Edwin Louis Cole
- “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” – Ronald Reagan
- “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
What Next?
- Want more motivational success quotes? Check out these Jim Rohn quotes about transformation and motivational success quotes from Depositphotos.
- Inspired to start planning your business? Get started with a 90-Day Planning Workshop.
- Need guidance to help create your next business plan? Schedule a complimentary strategy review call!
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