Inspirational Quotations

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

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)