Inspirational Quotations

Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you’ve worked on your own corner.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being an optimist is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

The moment one gives a close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world unto itself.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

The mere apprehension of a coming evil has put many into a situation of the utmost danger.
—Lucian

One can acquire everything in solitude but character.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (French Writer)

He who strikes terror in others is himself continually in fear.
—Claudian (Roman Poet)

A goal properly set is halfway reached.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Sure I love Goldie. How could you not love Goldie? Everyone loves Goldie. I love her, and I hope our love will continue, but I don’t want to give an I-love-Goldie-Hawn interview.
—Kurt Russell

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

You do not really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks.
—Icelandic Proverb

There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life.
—Booker T. Washington (American Educator)

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian Playwright)

Your dreams can be realities. They are the stuff that leads us through life toward great happiness.
—Deborah Norville (American Children’s Books Writer)

Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience.
Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise;
because of impatience we cannot return.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.
—Michael E. Gerber

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

I think that our fundamental belief is that for us growth is a way of life and we have to grow at all times.
—Mukesh Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

When many work together for a goal, great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed by a single colony of ants.
—Sakya Pandita

I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.
—Ingrid Bergman (Swedish Actor)

Knowledge is light; avarice ice.|Knowledge is water; this world dirt.|A trickle of wisdom appears from beyond|to check the vices of this world.|Should the trickle become abundant,|none would endure, be it virtue or vice.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Pressure makes diamonds.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first … when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

The most damaging phrase in the language is: it’s always been done that way.
—Grace Hopper

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.
—Norman Mailer

Never cut what you can untie.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
—John Lubbock

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows wither he is going.
—David Starr Jordan (American Zoologist)

A rising tide lifts all boats.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

When you are in a state of nonacceptance, it’s difficult to learn. A clenched fist cannot receive a gift, and a clenched psyche grasped tightly against the reality of what must not be accepted cannot easily receive a lesson.
—John-Roger, Peter McWilliams

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Nobody doubts that he exists, though he may doubt the existence of God. If he finds out the truth about himself and discovers his own source, this is all that is required.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
—Herbert Agar

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

If we want a joyous life, we must think joyous thoughts. If we want a prosperous life, we must think prosperous thoughts. Whatever we send out mentally or verbally will come back to us in like form.
—Louise Hay (American Author)

Every now and then go away, even briefly. Have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

As the ocean giveth rise to springs, whose water return again into its bosom through the rivers, so runneth thy life force from the heart outwards, and so returneth into its place again.
—Akhenaten (Egyptian Monarch)

I would rather have a good plan today than a perfect plan two weeks from now.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

You have only failed if you fail to try.
—Unknown

Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.
—Richard Bach (American Novelist)

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.
—Unknown

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

We will not be measured by our aspirations, we will be measured by our actions.
—Lee Scott

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

As a spider emits and draws in its thread, As plants arise on the earth, As the hairs of the head and body from a living person, So from The Eternal arises everything here.
—The Upanishads

The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish-born British Playwright)

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person s a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a egetarian
—Dennis Wholey

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.—Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all the evils arise which render us unhappy.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss Philosopher)

The road to knowledge begins with the turn of the page.
—Anonymous

Doubt that the stars are fire;|Doubt that the sun doth move;|Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt love.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

If you think you can, you can.
And if you think you can’t, you’re right.
—Mary Kay Ash (American Entrepreneur)

I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

It is what you do from now on that will either move our civilization forward a few tiny steps, or else… begin to march us steadily backward.
—Patrick Stewart

Write your life the way you want to. Life is a book. Each day is a day which you can’t rewrite.
—Unknown

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined! As you simplify your life, the laws of the Universe will be simpler, solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Catholic Humanist)

Life is divided into three terms – that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

The elephant passing through the market-place is always beset by curs, but he cares not. He goes straight on his own way. So it is always, when a great soul appears there will be numbers to bark after him.
—Tulsidas (Indian Hindu Composer)

You become a star not because of your title; you become a star because you are adding star value to the company.
—N. R. Narayana Murthy (Indian Businessperson)

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
—Lily Tomlin

Reminding one another of the dream that each of us aspires to may be enough for us to set each other free.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

Our character is a reflection of the friends we keep.
—Unknown

Follow effective action with quiet reflection.
From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.
—Christopher Morley (American Journalist)

One of the main barriers to turning knowledge into action is the tendency to treat talking about something as equivalent to doing something about it.
—Jeffrey Pfeffer