Inspirational Quotations

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart.
—Luigi Pirandello (Italian Dramatist)

A rolling stone can gather no moss.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form which is often the best solution.
—An Wang (Chinese-born American Engineer)

Now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.
—Annie Besant (British-born Indian Theosophist)

Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Sympathy is never wasted except when you give it to yourself.
—John W. Raper (American Journalist, Aphorist)

As long as I am back in my military life for a second, I should like to observe one thing about leadership that one of the great has said—Napoleon. He said, the great leader, the genius in leadership, is the man who can do the average thing when everybody else is going crazy.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best—out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.
—May Sarton (American Children’s Books Writer)

The water drop playing on a lotus petal has an extremely uncertain existence; so also is life ever unstable. Understand, the very world is consumed by disease and conceit, and is riddled with pangs.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people.
—Lucille S. Harper (American Freelance Writer)

There’s a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.
—Charles M. Schulz (American Cartoonist)

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
—David Ben-Gurion (Russian-born Israeli Head of State)

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.
—Saint Francis of Assisi (Italian Monk)

We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle—even if he can afford more.
—Masaru Ibuka (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

A lie told often enough becomes truth.
—Vladimir Lenin (Russian Revolutionary Leader)

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
—Tony Blair (British Statesman)

I know no better augury of a young man’s future than true filial devotion. Very rarely does one go morally wrong, whose passionate love to his mother is a ruling force in his life, and whose continual desire is to gladden her heart. Next to the love of God, this is the noblest emotion. I do not remember a single instance of a young fellow going to the bad who was tenderly devoted to his parents.
—John Thain Davidson (British Presbyterian Preacher)

Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

The opposite of good is not evil, it is indifference.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Maybe it was because like not only finds like; it can’t even escape from being found by its like. Even when it’s just like in one thing, because even them two with the same like was different.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn’t matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lays his own ultimate reality.
—George Harrison (English Singer)

There are two kinds of people who lose money: those who know nothing and those who know everything.
—Henry Kaufman (American Economic, Financial Consultant)

Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Rhythm is the basis of life, not steady forward progress. The forces of creation, destruction, and preservation have a whirling, dynamic interaction.
—Kabbalah Teaching (Jewish Mystical, Theosophical Tradition)

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The man who questions opinion is wise; the man who quarrels with fact is a fool.
—Frank A. Garbutt (American Inventor, Movie Pioneer)

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.
—John Keats (English Poet)

Rarely do more than three or four variables really count. Everything else is noise.
—Marty Whitman (American Investment Advisor)

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power—we must have a dispersion of power.
—Milton Friedman (American Economist)

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.
—Santha Rama Rau (Indian-American Novelist, Travel Writer)

Three things you can be judged by, your voice, your face and your disposition.
—Ignaz Bernstein (Russian-Jewish Bibliophile, Philanthropist)

It is far better to know our own weaknesses and failings than to point out those of another.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)

Ideas are somewhat like babies—they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, “This is a damn-fool idea.” Instead they ask, “What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense that is an opportunity for us?”
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
—Paul Dudley White (American Cardiologist)

On the outside one is a star. But in reality, one is completely alone, doubting everything. To experience this loneliness of soul is the hardest thing in the world.
—Brigitte Bardot (French Film Star)

When the ox is down, many are the butchers.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

The capacity of man himself is only revealed when, under stress and responsibility, he breaks through his educational shell, and he may then be a splendid surprise to himself no less than to his teachers.
—Harvey Williams Cushing (American Neurosurgeon, Biographer)

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
—David McCullough (American Historian)

The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. Why do we still blind ourselves, now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the immeasurable suffering that we inflict on animals, knowing that a great part of the pain that we cause them is neither necessary nor unavoidable? Certainly we should know that there is no moral justification for inflicting needless pain and death on any being.
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)

The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him the larger vision is closer than the near. Within an instant, he strikes for eternity, strikes and is done.
—Sister Nivedita (Irish-born Indian Social Worker)

I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
—D. T. Suzuki (Japanese Buddhist Philosopher)

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles—generally three to twelve of them—that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.
—John Reed (American Journalist, Poet)

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

All the way to heaven is heaven.
—Teresa of Avila (Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic)

I’ve always felt ideas were a dime a dozen. If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (German Holocaust Victim)

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Truth is not a crystal one can put in one’s pocket, but an infinite fluid into which one falls headlong.
—Robert Musil (Austrian Novelist)

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
—Catullus (Roman Latin Poet)

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

People do not get what they want or what they expect from the [stock] markets; they get what they deserve.
—Bill Bonner (American Finance Author)

What I’ve learned about being angry with people is that it generally hurts you more than it hurts them.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from the disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do, and how you do it.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along—or don’t.
—Harrison Ford (American Actor)

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Like other practicing historians, I am often asked what the “lessons of history” are. I answer that the only lesson I have learnt from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers.
—Ramachandra Guha (Indian Historian)

To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.
—Angela Carter (English Novelist, Short Story Writer)

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

The effect of having other interests beyond those domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today… Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise, one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.
—C. A. Dykstra (American Government Administrator)

The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God’s loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)

The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (American Nuclear Physicist)

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
—Paul Cezanne (French Painter)

All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
—Eddie Murphy (American Actor)

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

You are a fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don’t do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

People who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

You must intensify and render continuous by repeatedly presenting with suggestive ideas and mental pictures of the feast of good things, and the flowing fountain, which awaits the successful achievement or attainment of the desires.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

To create is to resist, to resist is to create.
—Stephane Hessel (French Diplomat, Writer, Concentration Camp Surviv)

The gods even envy him whose senses, like horses well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who is free from pride, and free from appetites.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation … Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person—it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen … to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
—Noam Chomsky (American Linguist, Philosopher, Social Critic)

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

In solitude, where we are least alone.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crises, maintain their neutrality.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.
—Jesse Lauriston Livermore (American Investor)

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.
—James Grant (American Writer, Publisher)

We can tell how well we’ve lived by how much hope we’ve left behind.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Men of sense often learn from their enemies.—It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war; and this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.
—Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwright)

People expect a certain reaction from a business and when you pleasantly exceed those expectations, you’ve somehow passed an important psychological threshold.
—Richard Thalheimer (American Entrepreneur)

This is something I’ve struggled with a lot: how to relate to the fear in a constructive way. It’s not that you eliminate the fear. We have all the fears. That’s natural; that’s human beings. But how do you deal with the fears, how do you engage with your fears in a way that’s productive?
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body.
—Irene Claremont de Castillejo (British Psychoanalyst)

The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.
—Jerry Seinfeld (American Comedian)

Any successful journey begins by packing your luggage full of imagination.
—Kathrine Palmer Peterson (American Author of Grief Books)

What’s the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
—James Boswell (Scottish Biographer, Diarist)

I’m amused by self-styled “busy” people. Busyness is as much a matter of identity as it is a reflection of time availability and schedule.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

It’s better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at length and be right too late.
—Marilyn Moats Kennedy (American Career Strategist, Author)

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It is the responsibility of leadership to provide opportunity, and the responsibility of individuals to contribute.
—C. William Pollard (American Businessman, Author)

There exists a kind of laughter, which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
—Zen Proverb (Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism)