Inspirational Quotations

How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really considered a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affectation is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself.
—Charles G. Dawes (American Head of State)

I’ve never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn’t have the right attitude, didn’t give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn’t prepared and didn’t have the whole program worked out.
—Ted Turner (American Businessperson)

Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

Look before you leap; see before you go.
—Thomas Tusser

You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.
—Nancie J. Carmody

Seven days without laughter makes one weak.
—Unknown

Healthy personalities accept themselves not in any self-idolizing way, but in the sense that they see themselves as persons who are worth giving to another and worthy to receive from another.
—William Glasser (American Psychiatrist)

I couldn’t wait for success… so I went ahead without it.
—Jonathan Winters (American Comedian)

I believe that dreams transport us through the underside of our days, and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are, the signposts are there, waiting for us to translate them
—Gail Godwin (American Novelist)

All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.
—Han Suyin (Chinese-born Eurasian Novelist)

Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong.
—Vita Sackville-West (English Gardener)

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
—Alberto Giacometti (Swiss Sculptor)

Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

People go through four stages before any revolutionary development:|1. It’s nonsense, don’t waste my time.|2. It’s interesting, but not important.|3. I always said it was a good idea.|4. I thought of it first.
—Arthur C. Clarke (British Author)

There are five tests of the evidence of education—correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue; refined and gentle manners, the result of fixed habits of thought and action; sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth, and a character based on those standards; power and habit of reflection; efficiency or the power to do.
—Nicholas Murray Butler (American Philosopher)

Power? It’s like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
—Harold Macmillan (British Head of State)

In long experience I find that a man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
—Harold Macmillan (British Head of State)

We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive; but the very fact we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing practice.
—Louise Hay (American Author)

No one knows what they’ll do in a moment of crisis and hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don’t despise it. But it can’t quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.
—Georges Bernanos (French Author)

All fair in love and war.
—Francis Edward Smedley

Liberal education develops a sense of right, duty and honor; and more and more in the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor as well as on good judgment.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering—because you can’t take it in all at once.
—Audrey Hepburn (Belgian-born British Actor)

You know that it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in college or in the world
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

You ought to be true for the sake of the folks who think you are true. You never should stoop to a deed that your folks think you would not do. If you are false to yourself, be the blemish but small, you have injured your folks; you have been false to them all.
—Edgar Guest (English-born American Poet)

The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?
—Edwin Markham (American Poet)

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
—George Marshall (American Military Leader)

The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.
—Colin Wilson (British Philosopher)

Laboring toward distant aims set the mind in a higher key and puts us at our best.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
—Lynda Barry (American Cartoonist)

Give wind and tide a chance to change.
—Richard Evelyn Byrd (American Aviator)

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.
—David Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
—B. H. Liddell Hart (English Historian)

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production, and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
—Adam Smith (Scottish Philosopher)

To sleep is an act of faith
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (American Journalist)

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.
—Dorothea Brande (American Writer)

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship.
—Carlos P. Romulo (Philippine Diplomat)

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
—Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (French Socialite)

The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

After some time passed in studying – and even imitating – the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism.
—Henry Peach Robinson

A rich man, of cultivated tastes, with every right to gratify them, knowing enough of sorrow to humble his heart toward God, and soften it toward his neighbor—gifted with not only the power but will to do good, and having lived long enough to reap the fruits of an honorable youth in a calm old age—such a man, in spite of his riches, is not unlikely to enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Dinah Craik (English Novelist)

The prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus)

It is not truth, justice, liberty, that men seek; they seek only themselves. — And oh, that they knew how to seek themselves aright!
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Enthusiasm is a vital element toward the individual success of every man or woman.
—Conrad Hilton (American Business Person)

Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
—Louise Hay (American Author)

Dignity is like a perfume; those who use it are scarcely conscious of it
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

Focus on your potential instead of your limitations.
—Joe Dimaggio

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
—Sacha Guitry (French Theater Personality)

We can be negative and cynical or we can be charged and hot wored to find a way through it, over it, around it under it.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Where fear is, happiness is not.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

Time turns the old days to derision, our loves into corpses or wives; and marriage and death and division make barren our lives.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne (English Poet)

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
—Diane Ackerman (American Children’s Books Writer)

Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
—Elizabeth Bibesco (English Poet)

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement—these are the martial virtues which must command success.
—Austin Phelps (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

You begin by always expecting good things to happen.
—Tom Hopkins (English Sportsperson)

Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one’s ideal.
—Anna Pavlova (Russian Dancer)

I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)

After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Businessperson)

Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
—Martin Heidegger (German Existential Philosopher)

First health, then wealth, then pleasure, and do not owe anything to anybody.
—Catherine II of Russia (Russian Empress)

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Your best teacher is your last mistake.
—Ralph Nader (American Activist)

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (American Educator)

Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.
—Sam Walton (American Entrepreneur)

A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.
—Richard Evelyn Byrd (American Aviator)

All that I am my mother made me.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
—Martin Heidegger (German Existential Philosopher)

I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win.
—Tom Hopkins (English Sportsperson)

In our society a man is known by the company he owns.
—Gerald F. Lieberman

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.
—Joe Paterno (American Sportsperson)

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
—Jonas Salk (American Biologist)

Because you’re able to do it and because you have the right to do it doesn’t mean it’s right to do it.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Now that I am ninety-five years old, looking back over the years, I have seen many changes taking place, so many inventions have been made. Things now go faster. In olden times things were not so rushed. I think people were more content, more satisfied with life than they are today. You don’t hear nearly as much laughter and shouting as you did in my day, and what was fun for us wouldn’t be fun now…. In this age I don’t think people are as happy, they are worried. They’re too anxious to get ahead of their neighbors, they are striving and striving to get something better. I do think in a way that they have too much now. We did with much less.
—Grandma Moses (American Painter)

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.
—Anna Pavlova (Russian Dancer)

Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.
—Domenico Cieri (Mexican Writer)

The essence of morality is the subjugation of nature in obedience to social needs.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Political leader)

The man who does his work, any work, conscientiously, must always be in one sense a great man.
—William Mulock

Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

Map out your future, but do it in pencil.
—Jon Bon Jovi (American Musician)

Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
—Sam Walton (American Entrepreneur)

Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life.
—Carrie Chapman Catt (American Civil Rights Leader)

No one has ever said it, but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.
—Robert S. Johnson (American Military Leader)

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don’t treat me right—shame on you!
—Louis Armstrong (American Musician)

Winter, spring, summer or fall|All you have to do is call|And I’ll be there,|You’ve got a friend.
—Carole King (American Singer)

Do not laugh at a person in misfortune.
—Chilon of Sparta

People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life—to learn something is a joy to me.
—August Strindberg (Swedish Playwright)

Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.
—Domenico Cieri (Mexican Writer)

“Come to the edge,” he said. They said, “We are afraid.” “Come to the edge,” he said. They came. He pushed them … and they flew!.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
—Desmond Tutu (South African Anglican Priest)

One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can.
—Catherine II of Russia (Russian Empress)

If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.
—Dan Quayle (American Head of State)

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
—Werner Heisenberg (German Theoretical Physicist)

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.
—Humphry Davy (British Chemist)

Truth is truth. If you hurt someone, you hurt self. If you help someone, you help self.
—Marlo Morgan (American Novelist)

To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so, is something worse.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.
—B. K. S. Iyengar (Indian Hindu Yoga Teacher)

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)

Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom.—When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again.—But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
—A. A. Milne (English Children’s Books Writer)