Inspirational Quotations

A thick skin is a gift from God.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Statesman)

The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
—Sheryl Sandberg (American Executive, Author)

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
—Edward Thorndike (American Psychologist)

It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.
—Edgar Z. Friedenberg (American Sociologist)

There is no more interesting place in the world to meet characters than a movie set. If you have lost anybody anywhere in the World and don’t know where they are, they are in Hollywood trying to get in the Movies.
—Will Rogers (American Humorist, Actor)

Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking.
—Anita Roddick (English Businessperson)

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between effect and cause is hidden from us.
—Peter L. Bernstein (American Economist, Author)

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.
—Evander Holyfield (American Boxer)

When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people’s excuse for failure.
—Robert C. Townsend (American Businessman)

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.
—J. B. Priestley (British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist)

If it’s intuitive, it’s probably wrong. The absolutely distinguishing quality of a leader is that a leader takes us elsewhere.
—Bob Galvin (American Business Executive)

This is where you will win the battle—in the playhouse of your mind.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

Once you have been confronted with a life-and-death situation, trivia no longer matters. Your perspective grows and you live at a deeper level. There’s no time for pettiness.
—Happy Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
—Billie Holiday (American Jazz Singer)

It’s just as easy to be happy with a lot of money as with a little.
—Marvin Traub (American Businessman)

We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
—Delphine de Girardin (French Novelist)

Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture—a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
—Claude Debussy (French Composer)

If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.
—Hokusai (Japanese Artist, Wood Engraver)

A fault confessed is half redressed.
—African Proverb

One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.
—Heinrich Boll (German Writer)

You gotta play the hand that’s dealt you. There may be pain in that hand, but you play it.
—James Brady (American Government Official)

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
—Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand-born Physicist)

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
—Eugene Ionesco (French Dramatist)

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
—Lionel Trilling (American Critic)

Except that right side up is best, there is not much to learn about holding a baby. There are one hundred and fifty-two distinctly different ways—and all are right! At least all will do.
—Heywood Broun (American Journalist)

You will never know a man till you do business with him.
—Scottish Proverb

We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.
—James Harvey Robinson (American Historian)

The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.
—Babe Didrikson Zaharias (American Athlete)

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
—Friedrich Engels (German Socialist Political Philosopher)

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.
—Malcolm Gladwell (Canadian Journalist, Author)

Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.
—Robert Andrews Millikan (American Physicist)

God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
—William Wilberforce (English Social Reformer)

What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.
—John Updike (American Author)

Go on—but don’t think you can kill my confidence. I’ve had experts doing it for years.
—John Osborne (English Playwright, Actor)

The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Feminist, Writer)

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
—Nathaniel Branden (American Psychotherapist)

So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character.—Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanliness who was a consummate villain.
—Benjamin Thompson (American-British Scientist)

An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.
—Frank Moore Colby (American Writer, Editor)

Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy.
—James Hamilton (Scottish Protestant Minister)

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
—Darren Hardy (American Author)

Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
—Primo Levi (Italian Novelist, Poet)

The criterion of simplicity requires that the minimum number of assumptions be postulated.
—Albert Low (Canadian Zen Master)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life.
—Robertson Davies (Canadian Novelist, Playwright)

You can’t start worrying about what’s going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what’s happening now.
—Lauren Bacall (American Actress)

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy.
—Dave Barry (American Humorist)

Smiles are the language of love.
—David Hare (British Playwright, Director)

If I had my career over again? Maybe I’d say to myself, speed it up a little.
—James Maitland Stewart (American Film Actor)

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
—Edward Albee (American Playwright)

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (Irish American Journalist)

Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.
—Nadia Comaneci (Romanian-American Gymnast)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
—Julia Ward Howe (American Poet, Author)

There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once.
—Ken Venturi (American Golfer, Sportscaster)

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
—Hamilton Wright Mabie (American Essayist, Editor)

It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudo-simplicities of brutal directness.
—Marshall Mcluhan (Canadian Thinker)

It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
—G. H. Hardy (English Mathematician)

Men are the dreams of a shadow.
—Pindar (Greek Lyric Poet)

The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they’ll listen to you just so you’ll have to listen to them.
—William Wharton (American Novelist, Painter)

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams (British Author)

Comedy in painting as well as in writing ought to be allotted the first place.
—William Hogarth (English Painter, Engraver)

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.
—Fred Hoyle (English Astrophysicist)

The more the world is specialized the more it will be run by generalists.
—Marcel Masse (Canadian Politician, Bureaucrat)

A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
—Arthur Brisbane (American Editor)

Style is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style.
—John Fairchild (American Publisher)

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.
—Paul Auster (American Novelist, Poet)

Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk.
—James Cameron (Canadian Filmmaker)

Never deceive a friend.
—Hipparchus (Greek Astronomer, Mathematician)

It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts.
—Sidney Madwed (American Poet, Author, Public Speaker)

I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
—Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) (Roman Comic Playwright)

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
—Mark Van Doren (American Poet, Critic)

Goodness thinks no ill where no ill seems.
—John Milton (English Poet)

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again—this is the brave and happy life.
—J. E. Buckrose

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
—Bernard Williams (English Philosopher)

After about three lessons my voice teacher said, ‘Don’t take voice lessons. Do it your way. You’re a song stylist. Always do it your way.’
—Johnny Cash (American Country Musician)

A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say “no” but none to say “yes”. Bureaucrats can find an infinite number of reasons for rejecting any proposed change, but can find none for accepting it.
—Russell L. Ackoff (American Management Consultant)

Ideals do exist, the rest is just temporary interruption.
—Vanna Bonta (American Writer)

Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
—George Mason (American Revolutionary Statesman)

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

We have no problems, only situations. Not all problems have solutions, but all situations have outcomes.
—John Edward Gray (British Zoologist)

A library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a man may take counsel with all who have been wise, and great, and good, and glorious among the men that have gone before him.
—George Dawson (English Preacher, Activist)

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
—Henry Adams (American Historian)

One rotten apple rots a bagful.
—Irish Proverb

You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
—Katherine Anne Porter (American Writer)

There’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.
—Bum Phillips (American Football Coach)

People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
—Jonathan Haidt (American Social Psychologist)

Whatever we call reality, it is revealed to us only through the active construction in which we participate.
—Ilya Prigogine (Belgian Chemist)

You can spend a lifetime, and, if you’re honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.
—Charlton Heston (American Actor)

How many hopes and fears, how many ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together in the threads that connect the parent with the child!
—Samuel Griswold Goodrich (American Publisher)

Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.
—Hunter S. Thompson (American Journalist)

Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.
—E. O. Wilson (American Sociobiologist)

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
—Emmet Fox (American New Thought Leader)

Age is no barrier. It’s a limitation you put on your mind.
—Jackie Joyner-Kersee (American Athlete)

To succeed in life in today’s world, you must have the will and tenacity to finish the job.
—Chin-Ning Chu (Chinese-American Business Consultant)

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.
—Leonard Nimoy (American Actor)

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.
—Franz Boas (American Anthropologist)

To be free is not to be independent of any form, it is to be master of many forms.
—Sidney Lanier (American Poet)

The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.
—Liv Ullmann (Norwegian Actress)

Truth cannot be memorized. Truth has to be discovered now, from moment to moment. It is always fresh, always new, always there for the still, innocent mind that has experienced life without needing to hold on to what has gone before.
—Barry Long (Australian Spiritual Teacher)

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
—Charles Mackay (Scottish Poet, Journalist)

He that spends more than he is worth spins a rope for his own neck.
—French Proverb

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
—Groucho Marx (American Actor)

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
—James Madison (American Statesman, President)

Fear makes liars of us all.
—Carmen Maria Machado (American Author, Essayist)

If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.
—Florence Scovel Shinn (American Spiritual Writer)

Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.
—Frank Harris (Irish Writer)

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.
—Margaret Sanger (American Social Reformer)

One can present people with opportunities. One cannot make them equal to them.
—Rosamond Lehmann (English Novelist)

The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.
—Margery Allingham (British Author)

Irony is a great help in helping to penetrate fraudulent language.
—Paul Fussell (American Historian)

In worrying about the future, I despoil the present; in my escape, I leave a true freedom behind.
—Peter Matthiessen (American Naturalist, Novelist)

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.
—Pedro Almodovar (Spanish Filmmaker)

The only people who like rules are people who lack imagination.
—Simon Sinek (American Motivational Author)

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.
—Nancy Friday (American Feminist Author)

In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
—Robert Ranke Graves (British Writer)

Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
—Robert M. Pirsig (American Writer)

The forces of things, the beings of the Universe, interpenetrate, divide and unite themselves according to eternal laws. But the laws of Nature are, to speak after the manner of men, Thoughts of God, in which all lives, that is to say, He is.
—Heinrich Zschokke (Swiss Writer, Reformer)

If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.
—Sheryl Sandberg (American Executive, Author)

Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.
—Louis Brandeis (American Jurist)

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!
—Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) (American Labor Activist)

A belief which does not spring from a conviction in the emotions is no belief at all.
—Evelyn Scott (American Novelist)

We keep going back, stronger, not weaker, because we will not allow rejection to beat us down. It will only strengthen our resolve. To be successful there is no other way.
—Earl G. Graves Sr. (American Entrepreneur, Publisher)

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.
—Gerry Adams (Northern Irish Politician)

Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.
—Pam Brown (Australian Poet)

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.
—Tommy Lasorda (American Baseball Player, Coach)

Our great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.
—Alexander Hamilton (American Statesman)

Great control of every motion and placement is a kind of self-care. It’s self-love in the best sense. I make a contract with the dancers (not literally, of course) to keep them alive and well and progressive—doing level best to see that they’re not injured. Dancing is not normal, that only a strong, knowledgeable body can protect against damage.
—Bella Lewitzky (American Choreographer)

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
—Claude M. Bristol (American Self-Help Author)

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him, you will always remember.
—Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.
—Beilby Porteus (Bishop of London)

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
—Jean Cocteau (French Poet, Artist)

Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.
—Pliny the Elder (Roman Scholar)

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)

As a means to success, determination has this advantage over talent—that it does not have to be recognized by others.
—Robert Brault

One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.
—Diogenes Laertius (Greek Biographer)

In politics, people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.
—Cecil Parkinson (British Politician)

It’s hard enough to write a good drama, it’s much harder to write a good comedy, and it’s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.
—Jack Lemmon (American Actor)

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

It is no proof of a man’s understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence.
—Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish Mystic, Theologian, Scientist)

The worst men often give the best advice.
—Philip James Bailey (English Poet)

Success and failure are greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about.
—Hildegard Knef (German Actress, Singer)

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
—Saul Alinsky (Community Organizer)

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
—Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (Scottish Jurist, Politician)