33 collaboration quotes to gear your team up

Think collaboration quotes are cheesy? That’s okay! We still believe some good collaboration quotes have their places in our work! Teamwork is a nightmare when it goes wrong. People shouting over one another, that one person who takes on the role of leader (even though no one asked), the trio who’ve made a clique, the social loafer…

It’s no wonder ‘now we’re going to get together in teams’ often sends groans rippling around the room. So why do it?

It’s because when teamwork works, it is so good. 

Teamwork is what helped us develop language and culture, it’s what makes great sports teams and businesses run like well-oiled machines, and it’s the only way we’re going to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems.

It might sound cliché, but teamwork truly is everything. Just take a look at these collaboration quotes celebrating the power of coming together for a common goal.

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” — H.E. Luccock

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan

“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” — Patrick Lencioni

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Complexity requires cooperation.” — Margaret Heffernan

“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” — Mother Teresa

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 others preaching.” — Knute Rockne

“Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie

“We are all in this boat together, and we owe it to each other to create the best possible experience for our time onboard.” — Aaron Dignan

“Leaders enable others to act not by hoarding the power they have but by giving it away” — Robert K. Greenleaf

“The three rules of teamwork: 1. You can’t win alone. 2. You have to try against yourself first. 3. Nobody cares if you failed, they care if you didn’t try.” — Unknown

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent van Gogh

“Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.” ― Virginia Burden

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”― Isaac Newton

“Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.” — Colin Powell

“Never confuse movement with action.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life forever.”― Amy Poehler

“Our destiny is not written for us, it’s written by us”

“A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” ― Rosalynn Carter

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” ― Abraham Lincoln

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish with pride and unselfishness—where you have people who don’t care who gets the credit.” — Harry Truman

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” — Booker T. Washington

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” ― Elbert Hubbard

“The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” ― Iyanla Vanzant

“When you hand good people possibility, they do great things.” ― Biz Stone

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ― Mark Twain

“There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” ― George Shinn

“One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts but teamwork dynamites.” ― Jin Kwon

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

“If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work. Now who wants that?” ― Matthew Woodring Stover

And here’s one of our favorite quotes:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Now that these 33 quotes have inspired you, get the team ready with tools that make collaboration easy.

From project management software with file sharing, comments, and notifications — to game-changing diagramming tools for virtual collaboration, you’ll be sure your whole team is on the same page, even when members are distributed across multiple different time zones or locations.