Inspirational Quotations

You cannot be fuelled by bitterness. It can eat you up but it cannot drive you.
—Benazir Bhutto (Pakistani Politician)

We are only activated by one desire—what we can do for the community and how we can help the nation strengthen itself.
—Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading (English Humanitarian)

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
—William Strunk, Jr. (American Writer)

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners—your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards—who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
—Thornton Wilder (American Novelist, Dramatist)

Not being boring is quite a challenge.
—Ian McEwan (British Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
—Marilynne Robinson (Novelist, Essayist)

Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question “Why was it made?” goes on and on, with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.
—John Muir (American Naturalist)

The sleep of kings is on an anthill.
—Pashto Proverb

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
—Charles Darwin (British Naturalist)

Even overweight cats instinctively know the rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.
—John Weitz (American Fashion Designer)

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
—Christopher Morley (American Novelist, Essayist)

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
—Hilaire Belloc (British Writer, Poet)

Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.
—Aaron Klug (English Biophysicist)

Reflecting the values of the larger capitalistic society, there is no prestige whatsoever attached to actually working. Workers are invisible.
—Marge Piercy (American Poet)

Luxury is a matter not of all the things you have, but all the things you can afford to do without.
—Pico Iyer (British-born Essayist, Novelist of Indian Origin)

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.
—Terry Pratchett (English Fantasy Writer)

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
—Paul Valery (French Critic, Poet)

A speech should not just be a sharing of information, but a sharing of yourself.
—Ralph Archbold (American Actor)

Mythology is an integral part of religion. It is as necessary for religion and national culture as the skin and the skeleton that preserve a fruit with its juice and its taste. Form is no less essential than substance. Mythology and holy figures are necessary for any great culture to rest on its stable spiritual foundation and function as a life-giving inspiration and guide.
—Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Indian Statesman, Author)

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.
—Robert Wilson Lynd (Irish Essayist, Critic)

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (American Social Critic)

We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Strong political beliefs in either direction limit your ability to make rational decisions more than almost anything else.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

It is the critic’s duty to enter an artist’s individuality, to discover his intentions—intentions of which the artist himself is perhaps unconscious—so as to judge how far he has realized them, and then to determine what place he occupies in contemporary art.
—Sadakichi Hartmann (American Art Critic)

Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged.
—Ted Sorensen (American Lawyer, Speechwriter)

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.
—Protagoras (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.
—Tom Clancy (American Spy Novelist)

Our visions begin with our desires.
—Audre Lorde (American Poet, Feminist)

There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.
—Charles Spurgeon (English Baptist Preacher)

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
—Kingsley Amis (English Novelist, Poet)

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.
—Hanif Kureishi (British Novelist, Screenwriter)

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
—Eric Hobsbawm (British Historian)

Think for yourself, question authority.
—Timothy Leary (American Psychologist)

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.
—William Motter Inge (American Playwright)

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
—Maurice Sendak (American Writer, Illustrator)

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you do not, pretend.
—Wally Phillips (American Radio Personality)

Power is the recognition of necessity.
—Abraham Rotstein (Canadian Economist)

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
—Thomas de Quincey (English Essayist, Critic)

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates (Greek Philosopher, Scientist)

I suppose the basic intuition that I have about it is very simply, this is a world in which there is a possibility of things going extraordinarily well or extraordinarily badly, where both the good things and the bad things are bigger than people think.
—Peter Thiel (American Entrepreneur)

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
—Henri Bergson (French Philosopher)

When you’re dying of thirst it’s too late to think about digging a well.
—Japanese Proverb

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.
—Charles de Gaulle (French General, Statesman)

It’s better to live as your own man than as a fool in someone else’s dream.
—Martin Landau (American Actor)

The superior man is he who develops in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual, and physical nature. This should be the end at which men of all classes should aim, and it is this only which constitutes real greatness.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
—Shirley Chisholm (American Politician)

Like a stone That rolls down a hill, I have come to this day.
—Takuboku Ishikawa (Japanese Poet)

The magnificent and the ridiculous are so close that they touch.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (French Man of Letters)

Faith assuages, guides, restores.
—Arthur Rimbaud (French Poet)

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Introspect daily, detect diligently, negate ruthlessly.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.
—Hans Morgenthau (American Political Scientist)

It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions, and actions of others.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Theologian, Poet)

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
—Rachel Carson (American Biologist)

It is with life just as with swimming; that man is the most expert who is the most disengaged from all encumbrances.
—Apuleius (Roman Prose Writer)

Life is neither a good nor an evil, but simply the scene of good and evil.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

I confess that I cannot understand how we can plot, lie, cheat and commit murder abroad and remain humane, honorable, trustworthy and trusted at home.
—Archibald Cox (American Lawyer)

The will to prepare is more important that the will to win.
—LaVell Edwards (American Football Coach)

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.
—Harold Bloom (American Literary Critic, Author)

Life is one long jubilee.
—Ira Gershwin (American Lyricist)

You seldom listen to me, and when you do you don’t hear, and when you do hear you hear wrong, and even when you hear right you change it so fast that it’s never the same.
—Marjorie Kellogg (American Author)

This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind. … As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions. But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures. The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.
—James Mill (Scottish Philosopher)

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.
—Nathalie Sarraute (French Novelist)

The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

One of the great penalties those of us who live our lives in full view of the public must pay is the loss of that most cherished birthright of man’s privacy.
—Mary Pickford (American-Canadian Film Actress)

For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine.
—Thomas Keating (American Trappist Monk)

Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician, Philosopher)

Success is the child of audacity.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself… That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life.
—Stanley Kunitz (American Poet)

Discover the centre of your being and hold fast to it; only from there can you describe the perfect circle of life rounded into its absolute fullness.
—Nolini Kanta Gupta (Indian Hindu Revolutionary)

A mind conscious of integrity scorns to say more than it means to perform.
—Robert Burns (Scottish Poet, Songwriter)

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.
—Ihab Hassan (American Literary Theorist)

Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement.
—Gerald Jampolsky (American Psychiatrist)

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.
—George Gissing (English Novelist)

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.
—Robert Bresson (French Film Director)

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge; it might more truly be called the knowledge of our ignorance, or in the language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.
—Max Muller (German-British Orientalist)

If food is your best friend, it’s also your worst enemy.
—Grandpa Jones (American Musician)

You cannot impress the mind of God by having a special Sabbath day set apart to tell Him what you want, and then forgetting Him the rest of the week.
—Wallace Wattles (American New Thought Author)

He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his hands.
—Bernard of Clairvaux (French Catholic Religious Leader)

Truth is inner harmony.
—Walther Rathenau (German Statesman)

We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until to-morrow. Keep going day in and out. Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.
—Arnold Bennett (British Novelist)

Laughter is wine for the soul—laugh soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. Comedy and tragedy step through life together, arm in arm… Once we can laugh, we can live.
—Sean O’Casey (Irish Dramatist)

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart.
—John Bunyan (English Writer, Preacher)

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.
—Don DeLillo (American Author)

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.
—Emily Kimbrough (American Author, Journalist)

A guilty conscience needs no accuser.
—Philippine Proverb

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
—Georges Gurdjieff (Armenian Spiritual Leader)

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving—instead of actually getting up and leaving.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist, Poet)

To play it safe is not to play.
—Robert Altman (American Film Director)

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there’s a criticism to be made today, it’s that the press isn’t doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.
—Walter Cronkite (American Television Journalist)

The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Statesman)

If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Philosopher, Writer)

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
—Muriel Spark (Scottish Novelist, Poet)

We know only four boring people. The rest of our friends we find very interesting. However, most of the friends we find interesting find us boring: the most interesting find us the most boring. The few who are somewhere in the middle, with whom there is reciprocal interest, we distrust: at any moment, we feel, they may become too interesting for us, or we too interesting for them.
—Lydia Davis (American Author)

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
—Lyman Beecher (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
—Gerard de Nerval (French Poet, Writer)

When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers.
—Ulysses S. Grant (American Head of State)

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
—Erik Erikson (German-born American Psychoanalyst)

Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.
—Henry Clay Trumbull (American Clergyman)

Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.
—Norman Podhoretz (American Political Activist)

Holding on to conditional beliefs about how people should behave toward you because of all you do for them will only set you up to feel disappointment, anger, and resentment to people in particular as well as disillusionment about others in general.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)

Listening to someone talk isn’t at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.
—Oriana Fallaci (Italian Journalist)

Even the worst artist that ever was, even a one-eyed mental deficient with the shakes in both hands who sets out to paint the chicken-house, can enjoy the first stroke. Can think, By God, look what I’ve done. A miracle. … Must be one of the keenest pleasures open to mankind. It’s certainly the greatest an artist can have. It’s also the only one. And it doesn’t last long, usually about five minutes.
—Joyce Cary (English Novelist)

Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
—Angela Davis (American Political Activist)

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
—Joseph Heller (American Novelist)

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.
—Wilkie Collins (English Novelist, Playwright)

Creative people who can’t help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
—R. D. Laing (British Psychiatrist)

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
—Jean Rhys (British Novelist)

When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.
—Nora Ephron (American Filmmaker)

Satiety is a mongrel that barks at the heels of plenty.
—Minna Antrim (American Writer, Epigrammist)

By doing good deeds all the time, the mind gets purified. Such a pure mind devoid of any bad thoughts is like a temple in itself.
—Subhashita Manjari (Sanskrit Anthology of Proverbs)

The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras (French Novelist, Playwright)

The test is to recognize the mistake, admit it and correct it. To have tried to do something and failed is vastly better than to have tried to do nothing and succeeded.
—Dale Turner (American Congregational Priest)

Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.
—Victor Borge (Danish-American Comedian, Musician)

A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.
—Charles Cooley (American Sociologist)

A purified mind can grasp anything. It can dive deep into the subtlest subject and understand even transcendental things.
—Sivananda Saraswati (Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

If you’ve truly committed yourself to something, given it all you’ve got, and then concluded that it is not for you—move on to something else.
—Susan Jeffers (American Self-Help Author)

Love lives on. Those we love are never really lost to us. We feel them in so many special ways—through friends they always cared about and dreams they left behind, in beauty that they added to our days, in words of wisdom we still carry with us, and memories that never will be gone. Those we love are never really lost to us—for everywhere their special love lives on.
—Amanda Bradley (American Poet)

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.
—Hesiod (Greek Poet)

The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.
—Brother Lawrence (French Carmelite Monk)

Aim at a high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second, and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success, for only practice will make you perfect.
—Annie Oakley (American Markswoman)

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.
—William Lawrence Bragg (British Physicist)

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.
—Upton Sinclair (American Novelist, Social Reformer)

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

People need to learn to take everyone as they are.
—Dawn French (Welsh Comedienne, Actress)

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted—a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
—Harold Kushner (American Jewish Religious Leader)

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. That’s basic spelling that every woman ought to know.
—Mistinguett (French Dancer, Actress)

No nation has the right to make decisions for another nation; no people for another people.
—Julius Nyerere (Tanzanian Statesman)

To me, we must learn to spell the word RESPECT. We must respect the rights and properties of our fellowman. And then learn to play the game of life, as well as the game of athletics, according to the rules of society. If you can take that and put it into practice in the community in which you live, then, to me you have won the greatest championship.
—Jesse Owens (American Athlete)

Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
—Betty Friedan (American Feminist, Author)

Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark, that you always carry in your heart.
—Raisa Gorbacheva (Russian Activist)

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
—Peter Ustinov (British Actor, Playwright)

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

If you promise the moon, be able to deliver it.
—Byrd Baggett (American Self-Help Author)

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
—Martin Amis (British Novelist)

Success is achievable without public recognition, and the world has many unsung heroes. The teacher who inspires you to pursue your education to your ultimate ability is a success. The parents who taught you the noblest human principles are a success. The coach who shows you the importance of teamwork is a success. The spiritual leader who instills in you spiritual values and faith is a success. The relatives, friends, and neighbors with whom you develop a reciprocal relationship of respect and support—they, too, are successes. The most menial workers can properly consider themselves successful if they perform their best and if the product of their work is of service to humanity.
—Michael DeBakey (American Surgeon)