Inspirational Quotations

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Sleep is a healing balm for every ill.
—Menander

Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.
—Jimmy Fallon (American Comedian)

I’ve always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

What are numbers knit|By force or custom? Man who man would be,|Must rule the empire of himself; in it|Must be supreme, establishing his throne|On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy|Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
—George Soros (American Investor)

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

I think the world really boils down to two types of people – those who see shapes in cloud formations, and those who just see clouds.
—Danzae Pace

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

I’m not happy, I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Absence lessens half-hearted passions, and increases great ones, as the wind puts out candles and yet stirs up the fire.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
—Unknown

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Let us ask ourselves; “What kind of people do we think we are?”
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

What you’ve got to do is be honest. Say what you believe. Give it to them straight. Just don’t wuss out.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
—Jerry Seinfeld (American Comedian)

It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.
—Robert J. Shiller

The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep..
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Showing up is 80 percent of life.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

A goal properly set is halfway reached.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Don’t try to see God, but act in such a way that God will want to see you.
—Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.
—James Cash Penney (American Entrepreneur)

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags – they’re gonna cough.
—Barbra Streisand (American Musician)

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

All search is vain, until we begin to perceive that wisdom is within ourselves … then we may know the sun is rising, that the morning is breaking for us.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

Be eager to acquire knowledge; it does not come to thee by inheritance.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that’s really picky about who you align with.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Catholic Humanist)

Giving advice makes the recipient feel less efficacious, so weigh that against the benefit your advice will likely yield.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

There’s something just as inevitable as death. And that’s life.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don’t, you don’t.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy—and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

The madman thinks the rest of the world crazy.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Apologies only account for that which they do not alter.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing “out there” is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

I wanted to indulge and explore my love of humanity and especially my concern for persons less fortunate than myself.
—Arthur Ashe (American Sportsperson)

Far more of life’s pleasures are in the process than in the outcome. Be in the moment.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organize your entire life around it.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

One must be something, in order to do something.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice and another which we practice but seldom preach.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

Think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted—in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest—at the command—of his head.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

It all comes down to this: if your subconscious “financial blueprint” is not “set’ for success, nothing you learn, nothing you know, and nothing you do will make much of a difference.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson in life who does not every day surmount a fear.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of a man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss Philosopher)

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Avoid this dangerous mix of personal (grasping), spiritual and selfless love. Most of the time it ends in frustration.
—Hans Taeger

We are never so ridiculous from the habits we have as from those that we affect to have.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Kindness arises by standing apart from oneself and recognizing all beings as companions on the arduous travel towards highest perfection.
—Hans Taeger

Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

The first essential, of course, is to know what you want.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Are you more likely to feel regret because of an action you take or because of inaction (something you do *not* do)?
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)