55 Motivational Jack Ma Quotes For Real-World Success

He may look like a small and skinny Chinese guy, but his wealth of knowledge is tremendous. Jack Ma is the richest man in China and one of the richest people in the world thanks to the power of the internet and his development of one of the best digital-based businesses in modern times.

Jack Ma was born in 1964 in China and is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational, technology conglomerate. He also co-founded Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm.

Ma grew up in a humble family and worked as a tourist guide for several years. He graduated from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988 and applied for 30 different odd jobs, receiving rejections for every one. In 1994 when he discovered the internet, he became drawn to it and started his own company Hangzhou Haibo Translation Agency the following year.

As his knowledge and experience expanded, Ma headed an information technology company established by the China International Electronic Commerce Center from 1998 to 1999 and a department of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. He quit both these in 1999 to return to the Hangzhou with his team and founded Alibaba, a China-based business-to-business marketplace site in his apartment with a group of 18 friends and 500,000 yuan.

Fifteen years later, Alibaba was raising over $25 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange. It became one of the most valuable technology companies in the world after raising the full $25 billion, the largest initial public offering in US financial history. Alibaba is now worth $231 billion, more than Amazon and eBay combined.

In August 2019, Ma stepped down from his role as Chairman of Alibaba Group, and CEO Daniel Zhang took on the mantle. The teacher-turned-entrepreneur is now spending his time on environment, philanthropy, and education.

If anyone defied the odds to become successful, it’s Jack Ma. He’s got a lot to say about his journey to the top, for anyone looking to dominate their own empire regardless of prior knowledge, experience or skill.

1. My job is to help more people have jobs.

Jack Ma

2. I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.

Jack Ma

3. I don’t want people to have deep pockets but shallow minds.

Jack Ma

4. You’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision.

Jack Ma

5. You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

Jack Ma

6. It doesn’t matter how wealthy or powerful you are, if you can’t enjoy the sunshine, you can’t be truly happy.

Jack Ma

7. You never know how much can you do in your life.

Jack Ma

8. No matter how tough the chase is, you should always have the dream you saw on the first day. It’ll keep you motivated and rescue you (from any weak thoughts).

Jack Ma

9. A leader should have higher grit and tenacity, and be able to endure what the employees can’t.

Jack Ma

10. I’m a normal guy.

Jack Ma

11. The very important thing you should have is patience.

Jack Ma

12. Without internet, there would have been no Jack Ma, and no Alibaba or Taobao.

Jack Ma

13. Leadership is your instinct, then it’s your training. Leaders are always positive, they never complain.

Jack Ma

14. You’ve to make consumers smart. An e-commerce portal doesn’t sell a product at cheaper rates, instead an offline shop sells it at a costlier prices.

Jack Ma

15. Opportunity lies in the place where the complaints are.

Jack Ma

16. When people think too highly of you, you have the responsibility to calm down and be yourself.

Jack Ma

17. It doesn’t matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don’t succeed, someone will succeed.

Jack Ma

18. Intelligent people need a fool to lead them. When the team’s all a bunch of scientists, it is best to have a peasant lead the way. His way of thinking is different. It’s easier to win if you have people seeing things from different perspectives.

Jack Ma

19. When we have money, we start making mistakes.

Jack Ma

20. I went for a job with the police; they said, ‘You’re no good!’

Jack Ma

Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?

Jack Ma

22. Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?

Jack Ma

23. Today is hard, tomorrow is harder, but the day after tomorrow is beautiful.

Jack Ma

24. Life is so short, so beautiful. Don’t be so serious about work. Enjoy the lives.

Jack Ma

25. If you are poor at 35 you deserve it.

Jack Ma

26. I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.

Jack Ma

27. Opportunities lie in the place where the complaints are.

Jack Ma

28. Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.

Jack Ma

29. Before you’re 30, work for a small company, learn passion, learn to dream.

Jack Ma

30. Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons to fail, whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.

Jack Ma

31. If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.

Jack Ma

32. If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat ten of them.

Jack Ma

33. The opportunities that everyone cannot see are the real opportunities.

Jack Ma

34. You need the right people with you, not the best people.

Jack Ma

35. We are never in lack of money. We lack people with dreams, who can die for those dreams.

Jack Ma

36. Today, making money is very simple. But making sustainable money while being responsible to the society and improving the world is very difficult.

Jack Ma

37. A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

Jack Ma

38. I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.

Jack Ma

39. If the customer loves you, the government will have to love you.

Jack Ma

40. It’s very difficult to know the outside world, but you know yourself. You know your need and what you want. If I know myself better, I can change myself to meet the outside world.

Jack Ma

41. Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.

Jack Ma

42. Don’t hire the most qualified, hire the craziest.

Jack Ma

43. You have got to keep trying, and if it doesn’t work, you always can revert back to what you were doing before.

Jack Ma

44. Never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation.

Jack Ma

45. When you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.

Jack Ma

46. Once in your life, try something, work hard at something. Try to change. Nothing bad can happen.

Jack Ma

47. I try to make myself happy because I know that if I’m not happy, my colleagues are not happy and my shareholders are not happy and my customers are not happy.

Jack Ma

48. You never know that the things you’re doing are that meaningful to society.

Jack Ma

49. We should never finish a 20 year program in two years.

Jack Ma

50. The world will not remember what you say, but it will not forget what you have done.

Jack Ma

51. I call myself a blind man riding on a blind tiger.

Jack Ma

52. We appreciate yesterday, but we’re looking for a better tomorrow.

Jack Ma

53. If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.

Jack Ma

54. If you are born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.

Jack Ma

55. If you’ve never tried, how will you ever know if there’s any chance?

Jack Ma