Quotes about Teamwork

Here's the next section of quotes from my book 1000 Great Quotations for Business, Management & Training.


An updated version of the book is newly available as part of my Almost Free Kindle titles both in the UK and in the USA.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

Henry Ford, US automobile manufacturer, engineer (1863-1947)

Teamwork is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.

Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.

Alexander the Great, King of Macedon (356-323 BC)

When a blind man carries a lame man, both go forward.

Joseph Stalin, Georgian-born Soviet statesman (1879-1953)

Not even mighty warriors can break a frail arrow when it is multiplied and supported by its fellows. As long as you brothers support one another and render assistance to one another, your enemies can never gain the victory over you. But if you fall away from one another, you can be broken like a frail arrow, one at a time.

Borjigin Temüjin, known as Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire (1162-1227)

A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.

Japanese proverb

When spiders unite they can tie down a lion.

Ethiopian proverb

A paddle here, a paddle there – the canoe stays still.

African proverb

One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Michael Jordan, US basketball player (b. 1963)

Ask not what your team-mates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your team-mates.

Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, US basketball player (b. 1959)

It’s hard to work in groups when you’re omnipotent.

Q, character in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, created by Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991)

There is no limit to what a man can achieve as long as he doesn’t care who gets the credit.

Bob Woodruff, US country singer songwriter (b. 1961)

The world is moved along, not only be the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Helen Keller, US author, lecturer (1880-1968)

The longer a management team is exposed to the problems of the real world the greater is the need to be prepared for a full range of problems and situations, and to have a team ready to meet them.

Raymond Meredith Belbin, British academic, management researcher (b. 1926)