Inspirational Quotations

You can’t be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.
—Frank Zappa (American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer)

It takes great goals to lead us out of our everyday limits into accomplishing more than we ever thought we could or would.
—Robert K. Cooper (American Author)

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
—Robert H. Goddard (American Physicist)

Self-pity is a death that has no resurrection, a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.
—Elisabeth Elliot (American Christian Author)

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
—Tom Robbins (American Novelist)

No matter how good you get, there’s always something further out there.
—Bill Walton (American Basketball Player)

History is life’s great teacher, though it rarely has diligent students.
—Juan Bosch (Dominican Politician)

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
—Kris Kristofferson (American Singer-Songwriter)

Study men, not historians.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

When you’ve found another soul who see’s in to your own… take good care of each other… and remember to be kind.
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (American Author)

Scientists announced today that they have discovered a cure for apathy. However, they claim no one has shown the slightest interest in it.
—George Carlin (American Comedian)

Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.
—Allen Klein (American Author)

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth.
—Booth Tarkington (American Novelist)

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.
—Alicia Markova (English Ballerina)

Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational—but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
—Judith Viorst (American Author)

To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.
—Frances Burney (English Satirical Novelist)

I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

The fairest flower in the garden of creation is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of divine wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms to the sun.
—James Edward Smith (English Botanist)

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
—Charles Wadsworth (American Pianist)

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
—Hugh Walpole (English Novelist)

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

Only when we have something to value, will we have something to evaluate. We cannot value something that we cannot share, exchange and examine.
—Lee Shulman (American Educational Psychologist)

Men are more inclined to ask curious questions, than to obtain necessary instruction.
—Pasquier Quesnel (French Theologian)

Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.
—Dianne Feinstein (American Politician)

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
—Paul Tillich (German-American Theologian)

Life is the acceptance of responsibilities or their evasion; it is a business of meeting obligations or avoiding them. To every man the choice is continually being offered, and by the manner of his choosing you may fairly measure him.
—Ben Ames Williams (American Novelist)

Our works and our play. All our pleasures experienced as the pleasure of love. What could be better that? To feel in one’s work the tender and flushed substance of one’s dearest concern.
—M. C. Richards (American Poet)

The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Science Fiction Writer)

For real winners there are no finish lines.
—Harvey Mackay (American Businessman)

The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.
—Janet Erskine Stuart (English Educator)

You can have such an open mind that it is too porous to hold a conviction.
—George W. Crane (American Psychologist)

When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
—Steven Wright (American Comedian)

I wish it were O.K. in this country to look one’s age, whatever it is. Maturity has a lot going for it, even in terms of esthetics. For example, you no longer get bubblegum stuck in your braces.
—Cyra McFadden (American Author)

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canadian Novelist, Children’s Writer)

We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.
—Whoopi Goldberg (American Actress)

Babies are always more trouble than you thought – and more wonderful.
—Charles Osgood (American Broadcaster)

It is impossible for a man to be made happy by putting him in a happy place, unless he be first in a happy state.
—Benjamin Whichcote (British Religious Figure)

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can’t be cured.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
—Barbara Johnson (American Author)

But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
—Francis Darwin (British Botanist)

Heaven, grant that the burden you carry may have as easy an exit as it had an entrance.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Humanist, Scholar)

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
—Karl Popper (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.
—Michael Jordan (American Sportsperson)

Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
—Pope Benedict XVI (German Catholic Pope)

The past is a foreign country; but the future is a neighborhood you have yet to explore. You might as well go there with a smile on your face.
—Bob Mortimer (British Comedian)

My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.
—Pete Rose (American Baseball Player)

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.
—Ludwig von Mises (Austrian Economist)

Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.
—Natalie Goldberg (American Author)

A lot of what acting is is paying attention.
—Robert Redford (American Actor)

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
—Dorothea Brande (American Author)

I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.
—Linda Ellerbee (American Journalist)

Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
—William O. Douglas (American Jurist)

Fear breeds fear.
—Byron Janis (American Pianist)

Never exaggerate your faults, your friends will attend to that.
—Bob Edwards (American Journalist)

Don’t wait for something big to occur. Start where you are, with what you have, and that will always lead you into something greater.
—Mary Manin Morrissey (American Author)

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet, Philosopher)

To praise is an investment in happiness.
—George Matthew Adams (American Columnist)

The very best way to learn self-control is by practicing self-control.
—Sterling W. Sill (American Author)

There has always been the pure nature of mind and there has always been fundamental ignorance in the mind.
—Kalu Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist Master)

No faith is our own that we have not arduously won.
—Havelock Ellis (British Essayist, Physician)

The question to everyone’s answer is usually asked from within.
—Steve Miller (American Musician)

Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.
—E. V. Lucas (British Writer)

Trying is only emphasizing the thing we know.
—F. Matthias Alexander (Australian Educator)

Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

The best place to solve a problem is not necessarily where it appears.
—Russell L. Ackoff (American Management Consultant)

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
—Walter Benjamin (German Literary Critic)

Our deeds are seeds of fate, sown here on earth, but bringing forth their harvest in eternity.
—George Boardman the Younger (American Clergyman)

Some men relate what they think, as what they know; some men of confused memories, and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever-increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives.
—Paul Feyerabend (Austrian Philosopher)

Life is like a sewer … what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
—Tom Lehrer (American Satirist)

Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.
—George R. R. Martin (American Writer)

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
—Robert J. Shiller (American Economist)

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.
—David Lynch (American Filmmaker)

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can’t wait to finish your breakfast. You can’t wait to do your exercises. You can’t wait to put on your clothes. You can’t wait to get out—and you can’t wait to come home, because the soup is hot.
—George Burns (American Comedian)

One who is not interested in literature, music and arts is veritably an animal without tail or horns. Other animals are indeed fortunate, that he lives without eating grass.
—Subhashita Manjari (Sanskrit Anthology of Proverbs)

What I am concerned about in this fast-moving world in a time of crises, both in foreign and domestic affairs, is not so much a program as a spirit of approach, not so much a mind as a heart. A program lives today and dies tomorrow. A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, but the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides.
—Owen D. Young (American Businessman)

True patriotism for a man is his childhood.
—Lisandro Chavez Alfaro (Nicaraguan Author)

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.
—Elliot Richardson (American Statesman)

Your past is important, but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.
—Tony Campolo (American Sociologist)

‘As a matter of fact’ is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn’t.
—Laurence J. Peter (American Author)

Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
—John Donne (English Poet, Cleric)

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.
—Quincy Jones (American Record Producer)

Business is like war in one respect. If its grand strategy is correct, any number of tactical errors can be made and yet the enterprise proves successful.
—Robert E. Wood (American Business Executive)

Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.
—William Blake (English Poet)

Mediocrity is fine if you accept it.
—David Mitchell (British Comedian)

Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.
—Gregory Bateson (British Anthropologist)

Astronomy has revealed the great truth that the whole universe is bound together by one all-pervading influence.
—William Leitch (American Sports Journalist, Author)

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd.
—I Ching (Ancient Chinese Divination Text)

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
—Grandma Moses (American Folk Artist)

Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith.
—Sam Shoemaker (American Clergyman)

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
—William Jennings Bryan (American Statesman)

Difficulty is a nurse of greatness—a harsh nurse, who rocks her foster children roughly, but rocks them into strength and athletic proportions.—The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.
—William Cullen Bryant (American Poet)

We were made to receive and give away way more love than we’re tempted to just settle for. Go for broke.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.
—Eugene Ionesco (French Dramatist)

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.
—Lance Morrow (American Essayist)

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Appreciate the constructive; ignore the destructive.
—John Douglas (American FBI Agent)

When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.
—Catherine Ponder (American Clergywoman)

This is the artist, then—life’s hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty’s miser, glory’s slave.
—Thomas Wolfe (American Novelist)

As you would not bark back at a dog, do not waste your time arguing with foolish people.
—Yogaswami of Jaffna (Sri Lankan Hindu Religious Leader)

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
—Muhammad Ali (American Sportsperson)

All autobiography is self-indulgent.
—Daphne du Maurier (British Novelist)

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
—Robert Staughton Lynd (American Sociologist)

I have lived to know that the great secret of human happiness is this: never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of “too many irons in the fire,” conveys an abominable lie. You cannot have too many—poker, tongs, and all—keep them all going.
—Adam Clarke (British Methodist Theologian)

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
—J. G. Ballard (English Novelist)

Why should you be content with so little? Why shouldn’t you reach out for something big?
—Charles L. Allen (American Minister)

It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.
—Guy Debord (French Philosopher)

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall… freedom and slavery are mental states.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Our minds can shape the way a thing will be because we act according to our expectations.
—Federico Fellini (Italian Filmmaker)

Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.
—Nikolai Berdyaev (Russian Philosopher)

A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are.
—William Ellery Channing (American Theologian, Poet)

I cannot take human beings seriously. They seem to me to have been created solely to amuse those who regard them in a certain way.
—Eugene Labiche (French Dramatist)

Art does not lie in copying nature.—Nature furnishes the material by means of which to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature.—The artist beholds in nature more than she herself is conscious of.
—Henry James (American-born British Novelist)

Castles in the air – -they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build as well.
—Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian Playwright)

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen.
—Robert Jarvik (American Scientist)

We are what we do to change what we are.
—Eduardo Galeano (Uruguayan Journalist)

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
—Tom Smothers (American Comedian)

You demand universal suffrage,—I demand universal education to go with it.
—William Edward Forster (British Statesman)

It is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action.
—Stanley Milgram (American Psychologist)

Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
—Karl Jaspers (German Philosopher)