Inspirational Quotations

What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Insults should be written in the sand, and praises carved in stone.
—Arabic Proverb

Love conquers all; let us surrender to love.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

No virtue is equal to the good of others and no vice greater than hurting others.
—Tulsidas (Indian Hindu Poet)

Nuns and married women are equally unhappy, if in different ways
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset, I just watch with awe as it unfolds.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
—Pablo Picasso (Spanish Painter)

It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
—Daniel Webster (American Statesman, Lawyer)

A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.
—Vincent de Paul (French Catholic Saint)

Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.
—William Lloyd Garrison (American Abolitionist)

Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (English Writer, Feminist)

A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

He who influences the thought of his times influences the times that follow.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

If you have ability in a certain area, why not capitalize on it and improve it and use it?
—Wilt Chamberlain (American Sportsperson)

One does not fall “in” or “out” of love. One grows in love.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.
—Shunryu Suzuki (Buddhist Monk, Author)

Appearances often are deceiving.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can’t find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose.
—Ross Perot (American Businessman)

The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
—Zora Neale Hurston (American Novelist)

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
—Sophia Loren (Italian Actor)

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
—Truman Capote (American Novelist)

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

The barrier between success is not something which exists in the real world: it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; too hard a religion, few persons whose devotion is of long continuance.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
—Ben Hecht (American Screenwriter)

Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you’re waking up to instant stress. You shouldn’t be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it’s time to start your day.
—Sharon Anderson-Gold (American Philosopher)

In prosperity we need moderation; in adversity, patience.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
—David Ogilvy (British Advertising Executive)

I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

People are twice as biased as they think they are, which is precisely why biases are dangerous.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing; but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
—Pericles (Athenian Statesman)

Heaven is at the feet of mothers.
—Persian Proverb

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.
—Baltasar Gracian (Spanish Philosopher, Prose Writer)

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London (American Novelist)

If someday they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied.
—George Westinghouse (American Engineer)

Labor is a pleasure in itself.
—Marcus Manilius (Roman Poet)

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist, Essayist)

So remarkably perverse is the nature of man, that he despises those that court him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
—Thucydides (Greek Historian)

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

There is no companion like solitude.
One who knows how to tune himself to the inner silence,
even in the midst of the din and roar of the marketplace,
enjoys a most recreative solitude.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A spoon does not know the taste of soup, nor a learned fool the taste of wisdom.
—Welsh Proverb

Two things we ought to learn from history: one, that we are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance beyond them.
—Thomas Arnold (English Educationalist)

If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we’d have a pretty good time.
—Edith Wharton (American Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)

In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough.
—Pierre de Marivaux (French Dramatist, Author)

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.
—George Burns (American Comedian)

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise, for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
—Stephen Covey (American Self-help Author)

I think if you have the opportunity to bully your opponent then you have to take that chance.
—Venus Williams (American Tennis Player)

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

The spirit of politeness is a desire to bring about by our words and manners, that others may be pleased with us and with themselves.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the “easy life of the gods” would be a lifeless life.
—Hannah Arendt (German-American Political Theorist)

Hope is a very unruly emotion.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

Life is life – whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

It’s easy to be liked: listen more than talk, praise often, and disagree rarely. The question is, is it worth the loss of integrity?
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Healing yourself is connected with healing others.
—Yoko Ono (Japanese Artist, Musician)

Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (American Economist)

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

Happy those who here on earth have dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.
—Novalis (German Romantic Poet)

The finest fury is the most controlled.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time in the midst of wretchedness.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet, Philosopher)

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
—Saul Bellow (Canadian-born American Novelist)

Do not keep the alabaster box of your friendship sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them, and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier. The kind of things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go.
—George William Childs (American Publisher)

Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

Every human being has something, a spiritual element, that makes them want to do better, to reach higher.
—Ela Bhatt (Indian Labor Activist)

Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s lie, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

Talk as much philosophy as you like, worship as many gods as you please, observe ceremonies and sing devotional hymns, but liberation will never come, even after a hundred aeons, without realizing the Oneness.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.
—Sappho (Greek Poet)

Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed.
—Michelle Obama (American First Lady)

Almost all the parts of our bodies require some expense. The feet demand shoes, the legs stockings, the rest of the body clothing, and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which could not much impair our finances. But the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

If we become increasingly humble about how little we know, we may be more eager to search.
—John Templeton (American-British Investor)

He who is drunk from wine can sober up, he who is drunk from wealth cannot.
—African Proverb

I am convinced, the longer I live, that life and its blessings are not so entirely unjustly distributed as when we are suffering greatly we are inclined to suppose.
—Mary Todd Lincoln (American First lady)

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.
—Benedetto Croce (Italian Philosopher, Literary Critic)

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
—Orson Welles (American Film Director, Actor)

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Philosopher, Physicist)

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
—Common Proverb

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.
—Ingmar Bergman (Swedish Film and Stage Director)

The passions should be purged; all may become innocent if they are well directed and moderated. Even hatred may be a commendable feeling when it is caused by a lively love of good. Whatever makes the passions purer makes them stronger, more durable, and mere enjoyable.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
—Jeremy Bentham (British Philosopher, Economist)

It’s fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That’s what human life is all about—enjoying things.
—Julia Child (American Cook, Author)

I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Innovation by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires ‘courageous patience’.
—Warren Bennis (American Management Consultant)

You find yourself refreshed in the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
—Lydia Maria Child (American Abolitionist)

The desire for true happiness is nothing to feel ashamed about.
—Thanissaro Bhikkhu (American Buddhist Monk)

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.
—Garrison Keillor (American Broadcaster, Writer)

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
—Harper Lee (American Novelist)

I realize that advice is worth what it costs–that is, nothing.
—Douglas MacArthur (American Military Leader)

No such thing as a man willing to be honest—that would be like a blind man willing to see.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
—George Orwell (English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist)

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
—Omar Bradley (American Military Leader)

I learned that you can’t truly own anything, that true ownership comes only in the moment of giving.
—Mia Farrow (American Actress, Activist)

It is not moral to lie, but you don’t always have to tell the truth.
—Ignaz Bernstein (Russian-Jewish Bibliophile, Philanthropist)

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of troubles.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The person who runs away exposes himself to that very danger more than a person who sits quietly.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (American Writer, Aphorist)

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

To understand the world one must not be worrying about one’s self.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

We can never be certain of our courage until we have faced danger.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes. In fact, one trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes. Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

We gain strength from other people. We give strength to each other.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

No effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few: and number not voices, but weigh them.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

A name is a kind of face whereby one is known; wherefore taking a false name is a kind of visard whereby men disguise themselves.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)