Inspirational Quotations

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)

In all the affairs of life, social as well as political, courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.
—Henry Clay (American Politician)

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. The only time you don’t want to fail is the last time you try something … One fails forward toward success.
—Charles F. Kettering (American Inventor)

Action makes more fortune than caution.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (French Moralist)

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Suspicion is most often useless pain.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our danger.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.
—Sivananda Saraswati

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. Every man who gets anywhere does so because he has first firmly resolved to progress in the world and then has enough stick-to-it-tiveness to transform his resolution into reality. Without resolution, no man can win any worthwhile place among his fellow men.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

How little man is; yet, in his own mind, how great! He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. He is given a freedom of his will; but wherefore? Was it but to torment and perplex him the more? How little avails this freedom, if the objects he is to act upon be not as much disposed to obey as he is to command!
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Row out to meet it.
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (American Author)

I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself”. My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well”.
—Booker T. Washington (American Educator)

All men by nature desire knowledge.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

We should manage our fortune as we do our health—enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.
—Frank A. Clark

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Learn the value of a man’s words and expressions, and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words. He who has a superlative for everything wants a measure for the great or small.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)

Selfishness is the only real atheism; unselfishness the only real religion.
—Israel Zangwill (British Humorist)

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

And in the end, through the long ages of our quest for light, it will be found that truth is still mightier than the sword. For out of the welter of human carnage and human sorrow and human weal the indestructible thing that will always live is a sound idea.
—Douglas MacArthur (American Military Leader)

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
—Felix Frankfurter (American Judge)

When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart.
—John Bunyan (English Christian Writer)

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.
—Margaret Thatcher (British Head of State)

The relation of master and servant is advantageous only to masters who do not scruple to abuse their authority, and to servants who do not scruple to abuse their trust.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise… that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist)

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.
—Hugh Prather (American Christian Author)

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss Philosopher)

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life’s circumstances to push them down and hold them under.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

When you can’t have anything else, you can have virtue.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist)

There are two modes of establishing our reputation—to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Your readiest desire is your path to joy even if it destroys you.
—Holbrook Jackson (British Journalist)

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that’s good taste.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Right is its own defense.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

It is a truth but too well known, that rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.
—Edward de Bono (Maltese Physician)

Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Philosopher)

A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s convictions not obstinately or defiantly (these are gestures of defensiveness, not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation, but simply because these are what one believes.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

Rich people see opportunities. Poor people see obstacles. Rich people see potential growth. Poor people see potential loss. Rich people focus on rewards. Poor focus on the risks.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Prepare yourself for the world, as the athletes used to do for their exercise; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.
—Jesse Jackson (American Baptist Civil Rights Activist)

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
—Martin H. Fischer

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

Training and managing your own mind is the most important skill you could ever own, in terms of both happiness and success.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

The prompter the refusal, the less the disappointment.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.
—William Gilmore Simms (American Poet)

The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

Not everyone will become a great leader, but everyone can become a better leader.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

The people who oppose your ideas the most are those who represent the establishment that your ideas will upset.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

You’ll likely learn more of enduring value from an hour of wise googling than from any course.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world’s ignorance and press for admission.
—Austin Phelps (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

The love of money is the root of all evil.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
—Alvin Toffler

The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews. The ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
—Herbert Spencer (English Polymath)

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

Let every dawn of the morning be to you as the beginning of life. And let every setting of the sun be to you as its close. Then let everyone of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others; some good strength of knowledge gained for yourself.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.
—Max Lucado (American Christian Author)

No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do.—Dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay and growth of it.—If with thy watch, that too be down, then wind up both; since we shall be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
—John Lancaster Spalding (American Catholic Clergyman)

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The only real failure in life is one not learned from.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That’s why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history—they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.
—David McCullough (American Historian)

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
—Benjamin Haydon (English Painter)

The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit—that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.
—Charles Buxton

When we speak evil of others, we generally condemn ourselves.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

In order to be a leader a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence, the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. If a man’s associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore is integrity and high purpose.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.
—Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian Playwright)

You’ll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you’ve got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

In perpetrating a revolution, there are two requirements: someone or something to revolt against and someone to actually show up and do the revolting. Dress is usually casual and both parties may be flexible about time and place, but if either faction fails to attend, the whole enterprise is likely to come off badly.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The virtuous man is driven by responsibility; the non-virtuous man is driven by profit.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
—Mortimer J. Adler (American Philosopher)

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.
—Leo Rosten (Russian-born American Humorist)

If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you’re going to turn out in life.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Do not talk about your greatness; you are really, in essential nature, no great than those around you.
—Wallace Wattles (American New Thought Author)

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

The soul refuses limits and always affirms an optimism, never a pessimism.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
—Charles Evans Hughes (American Elected Rep)

Marriage! Nothing else demands so much from a man!
—Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian Playwright)

When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

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

What is man but his passion?
—Robert Penn Warren (American Poet)

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Skepticism becomes the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. It is no longer directed against this and that article of the older creeds but is rather a bias against any kind of far-reaching ideas, and a denial of systematic participation on the part of such ideas in the intelligent direction of affairs.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
—Anthony Trollope (English Novelist)

If deeply based in wisdom, even anger is allowed.
—Hans Taeger

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

Happiness lies, first of all, in health.
—George William Curtis (American Essayist)

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Treasure the memories of past misfortunes; they constitute our bank of fortitude.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Image is what people think we are; integrity is what we really are.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.
—Martin Buber

For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
—Louis L’Amour