Inspirational Quotations

I must confess I am a fop in my heart; ill customs influence my very senses, and I have been so used to affectation that without the help of the air of the court what is natural cannot touch me.
—George Etherege (English Dramatist)

I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal; I had an ambition to build.
—John D. Rockefeller (American Industrialist, Philanthropist)

It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.
—John Knowles (American Novelist)

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.
—Cyrano de Bergerac (French Writer, Duelist.)

The effectiveness of our memory banks is determined not by the total number of facts we take in, but the number we wish to reject.
—Jon Wynne-Tyson (British Publisher, Activist)

After hard work, the biggest determinant is being in the right place at the right time.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

Tidy fees are the most effective remedy, both for the doctor and the patient.
—Dario Fo (Italian Playwright)

Arguably the only goods people need these days are food and happiness.
—Terence Conran (British Designer, Entrepreneur)

Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your highest potential.
—Tony Buzan (British Writer, Educational Consultant)

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.
—Raymond Carver (American Author)

There is a spirit and a need and a man at
the beginning of every great human advance.
Each of these must be right for that particular
moment in history, or nothing happens.
—Coretta Scott King (American Civil Rights Leader)

Knowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed.
—Terry Goodkind (American Author)

We seldom call anybody lazy, but such as we reckon inferior to us, and of whom we expect some service.
—Bernard Mandeville (British Writer)

Change hurts. It makes people insecure, confused, and angry. People want things to be the same as they’ve always been, because that makes life easier. But, if you’re a leader, you can’t let your people hang on to the past.
—Richard Marcinko (American Navy Officer)

The secret is to always let the other man have your way.
—Claiborne Pell (American Politician)

Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike.
—Eric Bentley (British-American Drama Critic)

Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.
—Clara Barton (American Humanitarian)

Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past.
—Joseph Juran (American Quality Scholar)

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
—Uta Hagen (American Actress)

Basically, the only thing we need is a hand that rests on our own, that wishes it well, that sometimes guides us.
—Hector Bianciotti (French Novelist)

Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.
—William Gaddis (American Novelist)

I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
—Edward Victor Appleton (English Physicist)

Whatever you can do, do it today and then old age will be a delicious fruit.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.
—Allen Ginsberg (American Poet)

For every finish-line tape a runner breaks—complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras—there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about.
—Grete Waitz (Norwegian Athlete)

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.
—Etty Hillesum (Jewish Diarist)

A vision without action is called a daydream.
—James LeVoy Sorenson (American Businessman)

If you’re successful in what you do over a period of time, you’ll start approaching records, but that’s not what you’re playing for. You’re playing to challenge and be challenged.
—Lou Brock (American Baseball Player)

Try in thine own experience, each; that he speak not for one whole day unkindly of any… and see what such a day would bring to you.
—Edgar Cayce (American Faith Healer)

I think of the telephone as a spiritual thing. Your bodies don’t have to unite you, but your spirits can unite.
—Joan Walsh Anglund (American Poet, Children’s Book Author)

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
—Nawal El Saadawi (Egyptian Writer, Activist)

Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.
—Edgar Lee Masters (American Poet, Novelist)

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
—Peregrine Worsthorne (British Journalist, Author)

Balance is the enemy of art.
—Richard Eyre (British Director)

You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.
—Abba Eban (Israeli Statesman)

If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you’re not going to get very far. You simply won’t. The journey has been incredible from its beginning. So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.
—Sidney Poitier (American Actor, Film Director)

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it
—Barry Lopez (American Essayist, Fiction Writer)

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain.
—Diane de Poitiers (French Noble)

The person who has earned love the least needs it the most.
—F. Enzio Busche (Mormon Church Leader)

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.
—William Proxmire (American Politician)

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (American Columnist)

After an event, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. Before the event, it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings.
—Roberta Wohlstetter (American Historian)

A good conscience is a continual feast.
—Robert Burton (English Scholar, Clergyman)

With much we surfeit; plenty makes us poor.
—Michael Drayton (English Poet)

Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.
—Herbert Spencer Gasser (American Physiologist)

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
—Helmut Schmidt (West German Statesman)

From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.
—Sophie Tucker (American Singer)

Do not demand love. Begin to love. You will be loved. It is the law and no statute can alter it.
—Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Indian Statesman, Author)

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm … As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
—Audrey Hepburn (Belgian-British Actress)

The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination.
—Richard Hofstadter (American Historian)

When I quit working, I lost all sense of identity in about fifteen minutes.
—Paige Rense (American Journalist)

We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.
—Emil Zatopek (Czech Athlete)

Power is the ability to do good things for others.
—Brooke Astor (American Writer, Philanthropist)

It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, “Don’t play like me, play like you.”
—Eric Clapton (British Musician)

Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity, not a threat.
—Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (British Prince)

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)

With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (Spanish Poet)

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)

Frustrated love has been the incentive for many great works.
—John Michell (English Esotericist, New Age Writer)

The best match in the world will not light a candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared.
—Algernon Blackwood (English Novelist)

No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.
—James K. Polk (President of America)

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (English Writer, Politician)

In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears.
—Constance Rourke (American Historian)

Many people feel empty, a world that seemed so strong just collapsed. Forty years have been wasted on stupid strife for the sake of an unsuccessful experiment. The values gathered together have vanished, the strategies for survival have become ridiculous. And so forty years of our lives have become a story, a bad anecdote. But it may be possible to remember these adventures with a kind of irony.
—Gyorgy Konrad (Hungarian Novelist, Essayist)

I may have faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them.
—Jimmy Hoffa (American Labor Leader)

Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.
—C. Everett Koop (American Physician)

Hard as it may appear in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
—Thomas Robert Malthus (English Political Economist)

Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me.
—Zane Grey (American Novelist)

To understand is to perceive patterns.
—Isaiah Berlin (British Philosopher, Historian)

Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.
—A. J. Liebling (American Journalist)

One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is the assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

Don’t believe that winning is really everything. It’s more important to stand for something. If you don’t stand for something, what do you win?
—Lane Kirkland (American Labor Leader)

Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was.
—John O’Donohue (Irish Philosopher, Priest)

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?
—Yevgeny Zamyatin (Russian Novelist)

If you’re not happy every morning when you get up, leave for work, or start to work at home—if you’re not enthusiastic about doing that, you’re not going to be successful.
—Donald M. Kendall (American Businessman)

All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac (American Novelist, Poet)

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.
—Fidel Castro (Cuban Political Leader)

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.
—Dolores Ibarruri (Spanish Communist Leader)

The moment of enlightenment is when a person’s dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities.
—Vic Braden (American Sportsperson)

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
—Elizabeth Wurtzel (American Writer, Journalist)

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.
—Queen Victoria (British Royal)

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.
—Kenneth Kaunda (Zambian Statesman)

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.
—Mort Sahl (American Comedian)

Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.
—Monzaemon Chikamatsu (Japanese Dramatist)

A leader has two important characteristics; first, he is going somewhere; second, he is able to persuade other people to go with him.
—Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary)

A man big enough to be humble appears more confident than the insecure man who feels compelled to call attention to his accomplishments. A little modesty goes a long way.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
—Ann Patchett (American Novelist)

The concentration and dedication- the intangibles are the deciding factors between who won and who lost.
—Tom Seaver (American Baseball Player)

It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne.
—William M. Evarts (American Lawyer, Politician)

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.
—Susan Sarandon (American Actress)

Understanding brings control.
—Isaac Bonewits (American Neopagan)

If the existence of human beings leads to nothing, what is all this comedy about?
—Camille Flammarion (French Astronomer)

It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle.
—Richard DeVos (American Businessman, Philanthropist)

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
—David Bohm (American Physicist)

Obstacles often are not personal attacks; they are muscle builders.
—Anne Wilson Schaef (American Clinical Psychologist)

Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering truth.
—Gertrude Atherton (American Novelist)

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.
—Michael Palin (English Actor, Writer, Television Traveler)

Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy.
—Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian Writer, Poet)

In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
—John of the Cross (Spanish Roman Catholic Mystic)

Real life seems to have no plots.
—Ivy Compton-Burnett (English Novelist)

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.
—Anthony Hopkins (Welsh-American Actor)

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
—Charles Sanders Peirce (American Philosopher)

A mind fallow becomes overgrown with the weeds of confusion and forgetfulness.
—Mick Burns (American Clergyman)

We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.
—Desmond Morris (English Ethologist, Writer)

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.
—Alan Greenspan (American Economist)

If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.
—Kirk Douglas (American Actor)

Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity.
—George Steiner (American Culture Critic)

Always give in charity to people of good conduct.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
—M. C. Escher (Dutch Artist)

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
—Russell Baker (American Journalist, Humorist)

Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.
—Vanessa Redgrave (British Actress)

Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to what they want to do.
—Kathleen Winsor (American Novelist)

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Good has but one enemy, the evil; but the evil has two enemies, the good and itself.
—Johannes von Muller (Swiss Historian)

Facts that challenge basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
—Willie Nelson (American Country Musician)

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and intruded depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.
—John Hope Franklin (American Historian)

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic he isn’t.
—Bert Williams (American Entertainer)

We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live.
—George F. Kennan (American Diplomat, Historian)

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.
—Francois Mauriac (French Novelist)

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.
—Queen Elizabeth II (Queen of United Kingdom)

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what’s said and what’s done.
—Seamus Heaney (Irish Poet, Playwright)

The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
—Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japanese Novelist)

There is scarcely anything more harmless than political or party malice. It is best to leave it to itself. Opposition and contradiction are the only means of giving it life or duration.
—John Witherspoon (American Clergyman)

Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.
—Michael Porter (American Management Theorist)

When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.
—Al Alvarez (English Critic, Poet, Novelist)

The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it’s a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
—Jonathan Lethem (American Novelist, Essayist)

The word career is a divisive word. It’s a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.
—Grace Paley (American Author)

The first duty of a government is to give education to the people
—Simon Bolivar (Venezuelan Patriot)

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.
—Elizabeth Gilbert (American Novelist)

There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.
—Edwin Paxton Hood (English Nonconformist Divine)

Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.
—John Aikin (British Educator)

The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
—James Martineau (English Unitarian Theologian)

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
—Ivy Baker Priest (American Politician)