Inspirational Quotations

Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
—Robert Anton Wilson (American Polymath)

When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one, then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out, one against the other, I take the course indicated by what remains.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
—Joseph Campbell

Celerity is never more admired than by the negligent.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth—and truth rewarded me.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure.
—Malcolm X (American Muslim Religious Leader)

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
—Shunryu Suzuki

A wise man who is grateful, faithfully keeps good company and duly gives a helping hand to those who are in trouble is called a virtuous person.
—Buddhist Teaching

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.
—Georges Bataille (French Philosopher)

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.
—Jeffrey Immelt (American Businessperson)

Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make not only for our own happiness but that of the world at large.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Those who are brutally honest are seldom so with themselves.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss Philosopher)

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

It’s true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.
—Sivananda Saraswati

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after is has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The person who offends writes as if it was written on sand, and the person who is offended reads it as if it were written on marble.
—Italian Proverb

The main thing about being a hero is to know when to die.
—Will Rogers (American Actor)

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Kind words are a creative force, a power that concurs in the building up of all that is good, and energy that showers blessings upon the world.
—Lawrence G. Lovasik

The child is not to be educated for the present, but for the remote future, and often is opposition to the immediate future.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

Kind words may be short… but their echoes are endless.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Nothing truly can be termed my own, but what I make my own by using well; those deeds of charity which we have done, shall stay forever with us; and that wealth which we have so bestowed, we only keep; the other is not ours.
—Conyers Middleton (English Clergyman)

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

He that is overcautious will accomplish but very little.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it because of other men’s opinions.
—Daniel Defoe (English Writer)

He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.
—William Graham Sumner (American Polymath)

Dislodging a green nut from it’s shell is almost impossible, but let it dry and the lightest tap will do it.
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Don’t abuse your friends and expect them to consider it criticism.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist)

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
—Samuel Lover (Irish Songwriter)

Trust not him that hath once broken faith; he who betrayed thee once, will betray thee again.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The ability to recognize that the winds have shifted and to take appropriate action before you wreck your boat is crucial to the future of an enterprise.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

It is not the amount of trade that makes the man poor or rich, but honest working and dealing.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. A goal is what specifically you intend to make happen. Dreams and goals should be just out of your present reach but not out of sight. Dreams and goals are coming attractions in your life.
—Joseph Campbell

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Human nature is so constituted that is we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.
—Thomas Aquinas (Italian Catholic Priest)

Reflect upon the defects of your character: thoroughly realize their evils and the transient pleasures they give you, and firmly will that you shall try your best not to yield to them the next time.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

He who goes no further than bare justice, stops at the beginning of virtue.
—Hugh Blair (Scottish Clergyman)

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves … self-discipline with all of them came first.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
—Sydney Smith (English Anglican Writer)

Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.
—Berthold Auerbach (German Jewish Poet)

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you make that gradually turn who you are, at any given moment, into who you want to be.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

When life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars.
—Robert Brault

Show me a completely contented person and I’ll show you a failure.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
—Denis Waitley (American Motivational Speaker)

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

Whatever bad awaits, don’t let it spoil the present moment.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Money is always on its way somewhere. What you do with it while it is in your keeping and the direction you send it in say much about you. Your treatment of and respect for money, how you make it, and how you spend it, reflect your character.
—Gary Ryan Blair

Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Character is much easier kept than recovered.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

A person well satisfied with themselves is seldom satisfied with others, and others, rarely are with them.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Sorrow is mere rust of the soul; activity will cleanse and brighten it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the atomic age—as in being able to remake ourselves.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Wise to resolve, patient to perform.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.
—Neale Donald Walsch (American Spiritual Writer)

Leadership is not magnetic personality–that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
—Jacques Barzun (French-born American Historian)

Tough times never last, but tough people do.
—Robert H. Schuller

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
—Ambrose Bierce (American Editor)

Actions speak louder than words.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
—Anthony Trollope (English Novelist)

Whoever said, “It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,” probably lost.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)

The first duty to children is to make them happy.—If you have not made them so, you have wronged them.—No other good they may get can make up for that.
—Charles Buxton

The horse fed too freely with oats oft becomes unruly.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.
—Isaac Newton (English Physicist)

We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.
—Jean de La Bruyere

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
—William Blake (English Poet)

The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed.
—John D. MacDonald (American Novelist)

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it.
—John M. Ford (American Novelist)

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them.
—Eleonora Duse

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterward rewarded by joy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Youth, abundant wealth, high birth, and inexperience, are, each of them a source of ruin. What then must be the fate of those in whom all four are combined.
—Hitopadesha

Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

He is the wisest and happiest man, who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)

There’re two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.
—Daniel Defoe (English Writer)

It’s too easy to criticize a man when he’s out of favor, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else’s mistakes.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
—Ernest Hemingway (American Author)

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

We may convince others by our arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

A man’s errors are his portal to discovery.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

It’s not the increasing competition; it’s going back to real work that most of us complain about.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.
—Marian Wright Edelman (American Civil Regrets Advocate)

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He who gives way to his wrath makes desolate his house.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic—something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word “decide” contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. Remember the Chinese proverb, “With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.”
—Maltbie Davenport Babcock (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Catholic Humanist)

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

Familiarity breeds contempt.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
—Sivananda Saraswati

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

The golden rule is of no use whatsoever unless you realize that it is your move.
—Frank Hall Crane