Inspirational Quotations

Each of us wrestles with the dark giant in our own way.
—Connie Zweig (American Minister)

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in.
—Thomas De Witt Talmage (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
—Theodore Dreiser (American Novelist, Journalist)

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
—C. P. Snow (British Novelist, Scientist)

The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.
—M. C. Richards (American Poet, Potter, Writer)

Morality sticks faster when presented in brief sayings than when presented in long discourse.
—Karl Leberecht Immermann (German Novelist, Dramatist)

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Unlike grownups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.
—David Puttnam (British Film Producer)

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.
—Franklin P. Adams (American Columnist)

Information is a negotiator’s greatest weapon.
—Victor Kiam (American Entrepreneur)

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the nation worthwhile.
—Earl Warren (American Judge)

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)

Before you can win, you have to believe you are worthy.
—Mike Ditka (American Sportsperson)

Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it.
—George Horace Lorimer (American Editor)

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
—Jim Carrey (Canadian Actor)

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of wisdom.
—Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (English Politician)

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself Yes indeed, all that belongs to me.
—Henri Rousseau (French Painter)

For the true student, everything that happens in daily life is a test.
—Karlfried Graf Durckheim (German Zen Teacher)

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?
—Louis Auchincloss (American Novelist, Lawyer)

The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

A good friend is worth pursuing… but why would a good friend be running away?
—Ashleigh Brilliant (British Cartoonist)

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
—Fulton J. Sheen (American Catholic Religious Leader)

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” “We’re not raising grass,” my dad would reply, “we’re raising boys.”
—Harmon Killebrew (American Baseball Player)

Love without attachment is light.
—Norman O. Brown (American Philosopher)

A well-aimed spear is worth three.
—Ted Williams (American Sportsperson)

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
—John Aubrey (English Antiquarian, Writer)

The smaller the function, the greater the management.
—C. Northcote Parkinson (British Historian)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.
—Robert Owen (British Social Reformer)

The madness of depression is the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
—William Styron (American Novelist)

Socialism is a vast machine for churning out piles of goods marked “Take it or leave it. “
—Arthur Seldon (British Economist)

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau (French Mime Artist)

Someone has written, “Love is a verb”. It requires doing – not just saying and thinking. The test is in what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.
—David B. Haight (American Mormon Leader)

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
—Ralph Washington Sockman (American United Methodist Pastor)

This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition.
—John Kerry (American Politician)

Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (Irish Novelist)

Diversify everything in your life, including the people you listen to for advice.
—James Altucher (American Author, Entrepreneur)

Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

The truth is that literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it to be. Response to it is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.
—Vance Palmer (Australian Writer, Critic)

Somewhere there is a map of how it can be done.
—Ben Stein (American Lawyer)

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing, they become fanatics about conservatism.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.
—Margaret Cho (American Stand-Up Comedian)

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
—Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Increased borrowing must be matched by increased ability to repay. Otherwise we aren’t expanding the economy, we’re merely puffing it up.
—Henry C. Alexander (American Banker)

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.
—Shirley MacLaine (American Actor)

I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.
—Tom Landry (American Football Coach)

The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other women’s.
—Diane de Poitiers (French Noble)

It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

There is a deportment which suits the figure and talents of each person; it is always lost when we quit it to assume that of another.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Do you know what the greatest test is’? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
—David Halberstam (American Journalist, Historian)

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.
—David L. Geffen (American Businessman)

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It’s tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
—Lou Holtz (American Comedian)

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
—Eugene V. Debs (American Social, Labor Leader)

It is useless to tell me not to reason but to believe—you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do.
—Margaret Laurence (Canadian Novelist)

I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people.
—Rodney Dangerfield (American Comedian)

Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
—Anne Lamott (American Author)

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.
—Naomi Shihab Nye (Arab-American Poet, Author)

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
—George Carlin (American Comedian)

Here shame dissuades him, there his fear prevails, And each by turns his aching heart assails.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.
—Cole Porter (American Songwriter)

Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support.
—Paul Samuelson (American Economist)

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Modesty and humility are the sobriety of the mind, as temperance and chastity are of the body.
—Benjamin Whichcote (British Anglican Priest)

There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be him self.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

All power is from within and is therefore under our own control.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Everyone’s quick to blame the alien.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.
—Kenneth H. Olsen (American Engineer, Business Executive)

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.
—Hannah Arendt (German-American Political Theorist)

Use thy best vase today, for tomorrow it may, perchance, be broken.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Indifference and inaction must always pay a penalty.
—William Feather (American Author, Publisher)

Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt: It’s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.
—Royal Little (American Businessman)

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
—Marguerite Yourcenar (French Writer)

The foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you’ve just described hell.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.
—James Montgomery (Scottish Poet, Journalist)

If results are our goal, they must also be our test.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

I don’t want to work. I want to smoke.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

What you hear, you forget; what you see, you remember; what you do, you understand.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Rage is essentially vulgar, and never more vulgar than when it proceeds from mortified pride, disappointed ambition, or thwarted willfulness.
—Hartley Coleridge (British Poet)

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

There is too much reason to apprehend, that the custom of pleading for any client, without discrimination of right or wrong, must lessen the regard due to those important distinctions, and deaden the moral sensibility of the heart.
—James Gates Percival (American Poet, Surgeon)

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

We are all born for love… . It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Genuine success is to be able to spend your life in your own way; to wear your own hide, not someone else’s; to live according to nature and to recognize infinite power.
—Alfred A. Montapert (American Engineer, Philosopher)

Forgiveness is the final form of love.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Fish die belly-upward and rise to the surface; it is their way of falling.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.
—Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

Success in life is not how well we execute Plan A; it’s how smoothly we cope with Plan B.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)

I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
—Carrie Fisher (American Actress)

Look important. It helps you think important. How you look on the outside has a lot to do with how you feel on the inside.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

When prayer is a struggle, do not worry about the prayers that you cannot pray. You yourself are a prayer to God at that moment. All that is within you cries out to Him. And He hears all the pleas that your suffering soul and body are making to Him with groanings which cannot be uttered.
—Ole Hallesby (Norwegian Theologian)

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.
—Marva Collins (American Educator)

Bigotry has no head, and cannot think; no heart, and cannot feel. When she moves, it is in wrath; when she pauses it is amidst ruin; her prayers are curses—her God is a demon—her communion is death.
—Daniel O’Connell (Irish Statesman)

Expert: One who limits himself to his chosen mode of ignorance.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man might be freed from an evil deed.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Somebody figured it out—we have 35 million laws trying to enforce Ten Commandments.
—Earl Wilson (American Newspaper Columnist)

Concentration and mental toughness are the margins of victory.
—Bill Russell (American Basketball Champion)

Hope is your most powerful weapon. Self-confidence is your greatest asset.
—Dhirubhai Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

The Universe knows what it’s doing. So don’t develop a big ego, and don’t be afraid.
—Benjamin Hoff (American Taoist Writer)

The function of gossip is to create an “in group” bond by creating an “out group” enemy.
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.
—William Beebe (American Biologist)

Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.
—Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)