Inspirational Quotations

We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed – one doesn’t always want to make it – does one? … But what else can be done? What’s the alternative? What do you want most to do? That’s what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

Learning is about more than simply acquiring new knowledge and insights; it is also crucial to unlearn old knowledge that has outlive its relevance. Thus, forgetting is probably at least as important as learning.
—Gary Ryan Blair

Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It’s something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.
—Louise Erdrich (American Children’s Books Writer)

All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.
—Alexis Carrel (American Surgeon)

Do noble things, do not dream them all day long.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Occupation was one of the pleasures of paradise, and we cannot be happy without it.
—Anna Brownell Jameson

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such.
—Og Mandino

There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing
—Claude Levi-Strauss

When the anger of the gods is incurred, wealth or power only bring more devastating punishment.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
—Peter McWilliams (American Author)

It doesn’t take great men to do things, but it is doing things that make men great.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.
—Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (American Philanthropist)

A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.
—Minna Antrim

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
—Margaret Fuller

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

The trouble with the future is that is usually arrives before we’re ready for it.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.
—Georges Gurdjieff (Armenian Philosopher)

Attach yourself to those who advise you rather than praise you.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

The first attribute that characterizes the greater man from the moron is his thicker layer of inhibition.
—Martin H. Fischer

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
—Thomas Mann (German Novelist)

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.
—Andre Maurois

Someone has defined genius as intensity of purpose: the ability to do, the patience to wait… Put these together and you have genius, and you have achievement.
—Leo J. Muir

You’ll break the worry habit the day you decide you can meet and master the worse that can happen to you.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
—Brendan Behan (Irish Poet)

Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
—Alan Alda (American Actor)

I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, and consequently suggests more tugging, and pain, and diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.
—Edith Wharton

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it.
—Alvin Toffler

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don’t want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.
—Leonardo DiCaprio (American Actor)

Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.
—Hannah Arendt (German Political Theorist)

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to put up with a few blisters.
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (American Columnist)

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

People say to me, “You were a roaring success. How did you do it?” I go back to what my parents taught me. Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don’t just stand there, make something happen.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

If you can go through life without ever experiencing pain you probably haven’t been born yet. And if you’ve gone through pain and think you know exactly why, you haven’t examined all the options.
—Neil Simon

Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one’s self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.
—Alexis Carrel (American Surgeon)

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
—Alvin Toffler

When work goes out of style, we may expect to see civilization totter and fall.
—John D. Rockefeller (American Businessperson)

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (French Moralist)

The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent of things, but be a part of personality (and character).
—William Lyon Phelps (American Author)

Your silent thoughts are like the roots of a plant. They remain hidden in the dark recesses of the earth, but from them stems the whole plant–its life and form, its strength and beauty. From them and through them the plant lives and dies. So, too, your thoughts, although hidden, are your real, vital force.
—Lawrence G. Lovasik

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
—Max Lerner

If we decide to take this level of business creating ability nationwide, we’ll all be plucking chickens for a living.
—Ross Perot (American Businessman)

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.
—Mark Van Doren

Every time you get angry, you poison your own system.
—Alfred A. Montapert

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
—Margot Fonteyn

What I cannot love, I overlook.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn’t harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.
—Henri Matisse

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won’t.
—Alfred Korzybski (Polish-born American Philosopher)

Depression is the inability to construct a future.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
—Alexis Carrel (American Surgeon)

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
—Og Mandino

Solitude is the place of purification.
—Martin Buber

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.
—Martin Buber

It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flatter; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be.
—Charles Sanders Peirce (American Philosopher)

There are two insults no human will endure: the assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.
—Sinclair Lewis

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
—Samuel Beckett (Irish Novelist, Playwright)

I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
—Thucydides

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.
—Alvin Toffler

No matter how well you perform there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.
—Laurence Olivier (English Actor)

Life is too short for theatrics, for face time, for jumping through hoops, for excuses, for blaming, for trying too hard to please others, or for chasing society’s illusion of distant riches or fame.
—Robert Cooper

The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.
—Frederick William Faber (British Hymn writer)

It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.
—Gian Carlo Menotti (Italian-born American Composer)

I wish I were either rich enough or poor enough to do a lot of things that are impossible in my present comfortable circumstances.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.
—Harold Bloom (American Literary Critic)

Every time you win, you’re reborn; when you lose, you die a little.
—George E. Allen (American Sportsperson)

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Obscurity in writing is commonly a proof of darkness in the mind; the greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.
—John Wilkins (English Anglican Clergyman)

If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (French Essayist)

True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (British Children’s Books Writer)

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
—Karl Barth (Swiss Reformed Theologian)

I have condemned Khomeini’s fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie as a breach of international relations and as an assault on Islam as we know it in the era of apostasy. I believe that the wrong done by Khomeini towards Islam and the Muslims is no less than that done by the author himself. As regards freedom of expression, I have said that it must be considered sacred and that thought can only be corrected by counter-thought. During the debate, I supported the boycott of the book as a means of maintaining social peace, granted that such a decision would not be used as a pretext to constrain thought.
—Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian Novelist)

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
—Martin Heidegger (German Existential Philosopher)

Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language.
—Gail Godwin (American Novelist)

There is a point where you aren’t as much mom and daughter as you are adults and friends. It doesn’t happen for everyone–but it did for Mom and me.
—Jamie Lee Curtis (American Children’s Books Writer)

The real price of everything is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
—Adam Smith (Scottish Philosopher)

Patience is also a form of action.
—Dick Sutphen

Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.
—Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar (Scottish Businessperson)

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

Most ball games are lost, not won.
—Casey Stengel (American Sportsperson)

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

Little deeds of kindness,|little words of love,|make our earth an Eden,|like the heaven above.
—Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney (American Educator)

Love all. Serve all. Help ever. Hurt never.
—Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

Power intoxicates men. When a man is intoxicated by alcohol, he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers.
—Sappho (Greek Poet)

Our mistakes from the past are just that: mistakes. And they were necessary to make in order to become the wiser person we became.
—Bill Maher (American Comedian TV Personality)

Do what you fear most and you control fear.
—George Bancroft

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas… that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

Sow a thought, reap an act; Sow an act, reap a habit; Sow a habit, reap a character; Sow a character, reap adestiny.
—Anonymous

If you take risks, you may fail. But if you don’t take risks, you will surely fail. The greatest risk of all is to do nothing.
—Roberto Goizueta (Cuban Businessperson)

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of “work,” because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don’t always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)