Inspirational Quotations

Humility leads to strength and not to weakness. It is the highest form of self-respect to admit mistakes and to make amends for them.
—John J. McCloy (American Diplomat)

The names that do the serious damage are the ones we call ourselves. The stereotypes we give ourselves are the ones that matter in the long run, not the ones imposed on us by other people.
—Judith Rich Harris (American Psychologist)

Subdue fate by exerting human strength to the maximum; and if, when the effort has been made and success is not achieved, no one else can be blamed.
—The Hitopadesha (Indian Collection of Fables)

Nothing is so contemptible as the sentiments of the mob.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.
—Wayne Dyer (American Self-help Author)

The main function of a university is not to grant degrees and diplomas, but to develop the university spirit and advance learning. The former is impossible without corporate life, the latter without honours and post-graduate.
—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosopher, Political Leader)

Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason and invective for documentation than in politics.
—John Mason Brown (American Drama Critic)

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
—Socrates (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Truth, self control, asceticism, generosity, non-injury, constancy in virtue—these are the means of success, not caste or family.
—The Mahabharata (Hindu Religious Text)

Trying and failing isn’t a small part of life, it’s much of life. The rest is just learning how to grow from it.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.
—Donald Trump (American Businessperson, Head of State)

Faith is a permanent and vital endowment of the human mind—a part of reason itself. The insane alone are without it.
—Eden Phillpotts (British Writer)

But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person.
—Mikhail Bakunin (Russian Anarchist)

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

You can’t teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.
—Bruno Bettelheim (Austrian-born Psychoanalyst)

You have powers you never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do. There are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations of your own mind.
—Darwin P. Kingsley (American Businessman)

Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities, we gain only as we give.
—William Gilmore Simms (American Novelist)

It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
—Margaret Wander Bonanno (American Writer)

I sometimes say that success just happens. That’s not true. You have to make it happen. When I make up my mind to do something, I make sure it happens. You can’t wait for the phone to ring. You have to ring them.
—Lew Grade (British Theatrical Impresario)

The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted. Some misquotations are still variable, some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones. They have passed over from literature into speech.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren (American Critic, Historian)

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
—Frank Herbert (American Science-fiction Writer)

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

When the time comes, even a rat becomes a tiger.
—Japanese Proverb

We are all, it seems, saving ourselves for the Senior Prom. But many of us forget that somewhere along the way we must learn to dance.
—Alan Harrington (American Novelist)

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
—Mother Teresa (Roman Catholic Nun)

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
—Hesiod (Greek Poet)

A trick is clever only once.
—Yiddish Proverb

Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate souvenir is a broader perspective.
—Rick Steves (American Travel Writer, Entrepreneur)

In war there is no substitute for victory.
—Douglas MacArthur (American Military Leader)

The happiest men are those who have reached the point where they have nothing to fear from those who surround them.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

A people, secure in their jobs, taking pride in their work, and sure of just recognition, will help our society grow to new heights. If all industry should adopt an incentive system, the standard of living of all peoples would be quadrupled; friction between labor and management would disappear, and the satisfaction of all workers would be greatly enhanced.
—James F. Lincoln (American Industrialist)

We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.
—Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (Scottish Jurist, Politician)

Trust your hunches… Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. Warning! Do not confuse your hunches with wishful thinking. This is the road to disaster.
—Joyce Brothers (American Psychologist)

It requires strength of character to act upon one’s ideas; it requires no less strength of character to resist being seduced by them.
—Irving Kristol (American Political Writer)

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (American Academic, Politician)

Even a crust is bread.
—Finnish Proverb

I live on hope, and that I think do all who come into this world.
—Robert Bridges (English Poet)

One of the most important factors, not only in military matters but in life as a whole, is . . the ability to direct one’s whole energies towards the fulfillment of a particular task.
—Erwin Rommel (German Field Marshal)

Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children don’t usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
—Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (German Man of Letters)

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid… He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
—Raymond Chandler (American Novelist)

If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.
—Sidney Madwed (American Poet, Author, Public Speaker)

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.
—Edward Young (English Poet)

To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves. To my way of thinking, an actor’s course is set even before he’s out of the cradle.
—James Dean (American Film Actor)

Life begins before a soul is born and commences once again with the act of dying, and as in the Afro-Asian symbol of the snake of eternity swallowing its tail, all is in flux, all comes full circle, with no beginning and no end.
—Peter Matthiessen (American Naturalist, Novelist)

We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.
—Tobias Wolff (American Author)

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.
—Ann Patchett (American Novelist)

The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.
—George Dawson (English Preacher, Activist)

The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Underwater Explorer)

The hard-core intentionalist expresses only the most remote concern for consequences—usually, some vague, distant utopia. But this is, in most cases, a rationalization. His real satisfaction comes from a sense of doing the right thing—even when right has, in his mind, no clear connection with reality.
—Robert Bidinotto (American Novelist, Journalist)

In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere.
—Maxim Gorky (Russian Writer)

No man can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. If I do not find in a book something which I am looking for, or am ready to receive, then the book is no book for me however much it may be for another man.
—Noah Porter (American Clergyman)

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.
—Jonathan Haidt (American Social Psychologist)

You can’t just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream, you’ve got to get out there and make it happen yourself.
—Diana Ross (American Singer, Actress)

Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

When you tame and domesticate the divine it loses its danger and it’s power to forgive you, make you happy, or its power to challenge you, and call you towards new growth.
—John O’Donohue (Irish Philosopher, Priest)

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
—Ouida (Maria Louise Rame) (English Novelist)

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgerize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.
—William Bernbach (American Advertising Executive)

Glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally and physically and in appearance, and that, whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it.
—Marlene Dietrich (German-American Actress, Singer)

Of all the riches that we hug, of all the pleasures we enjoy, we can carry no more out of this world than out of a dream.
—John Sutherland Bonnell (American Preacher)

Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap injuries.
—Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) (Roman Comic Playwright)

There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.
—Alec Guinness (English Actor)

My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Playwright)

It’s comforting to use someone else’s priorities to guide our work. It lets us off the hook. But the only way to do our best work is to realize that part of what it means to do our work is to own the priorities as well. Your boat, your compass.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

A guest never forgets the host who had treated him kindly.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (American Psychiatrist)

The price of power is responsibility for the public good.
—Winthrop W. Aldrich (American Banker, Diplomat)

I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.
—Gale Sayers (American Football Player)

Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.
—Bhagat Singh (Indian Revolutionary)

You have to know exactly what you want out of your career. If you want to be a star, you don’t bother with other things.
—Marilyn Horne (American Opera Singer)

A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.
—Hermann von Helmholtz (German Physiologist)

The principles now implanted in thy bosom will grow, and one day reach maturity; and in that maturity thou wilt find thy heaven or thy hell.
—R. David Thomas (American Entrepreneur)

A believer is a songless bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wings.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart.
—Arabic Proverb

Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
—James E. Burke (American Business Executive)

In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science.
—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Founder of the Turkish Republic)

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)

Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation the source of strength is one’s self. When one prays he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
—Soong Mei-ling (Chinese Political Figure)

The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game.
—Earl Weaver (American Baseball Player, Manager)

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
—William C. Dement (American Sleep Researcher)

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.
—Ralph Ellison (American Novelist)

We can make inspired guesses, but we don’t know for certain what physical and chemical properties of the planet’s crust, its ocean, and its atmosphere made it so conducive to such a sudden appearance of life …
—Isaac Asimov (American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist)

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

When people have nothing, all they want is a handful of grains.
When they become wealthy, they treat the world like a straw.
Material objects by themselves are not great or worthless.
It is the fluctuating fortune of people that makes things appear big or small.
—Bhartrihari (Hindu Philosopher, Grammarian)

Ask thy purse what thou should spend.
—Scottish Proverb

I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.
—N. R. Narayana Murthy (Indian Businessperson)

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their acts.
—Dwight Morrow (American Businessman, Diplomat)

No doing without some ruing.
—Sigrid Undset (Norwegian Novelist)

Beauty in the flesh will continue to rule the world.
—Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (American Theatre Manager)

The day I become content is the day I cease to be anything more than a man who hit home runs.
—Hank Aaron (American Baseball Player)

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.
—Charles Bukowski (American Writer)

A library is where you meet fascinating characters you never forget.
—Judy Blume (American Author)

There’s been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with.
—Michael Pollan (American Food Writer)

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.
—George Moore (Irish Writer)

It is very very difficult to lift the rock till the peak of the mountain. But it’s very very easy to get the same rock from the peak to the mountain foot. In the same way it is very difficult task to induce noble thoughts in to a person’s mind and to make him/her a good individual. But it’s far more simple to induce bad habits in a person.
—Subhashita Manjari (Sanskrit Anthology of Proverbs)

Charity ain’t giving people what you wants to give, it’s giving people what they need to get.
—Terry Pratchett (English Fantasy Writer)

When a woman behaves like a man why doesn’t she behave like a nice man?
—Edith Evans (English Actress)

It’s one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work—the night watchman.
—Tallulah Bankhead (American Actress)

It’s a terribly hard job to spend a billion dollars and get your money’s worth.
—George M. Humphrey (American Lawyer)

When fortune empties her chamber pot on your head, smile and say We are going to have a summer shower.
—John A. Macdonald (Canadian Statesman)

The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, ‘I can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by.’ Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement that goes with it.
—Stephane Hessel (French Diplomat, Writer, Concentration Camp Surviv)

No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time—but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.
—Charles Erwin Wilson (American Businessperson)

You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
—Yuval Noah Harari (Israeli Historian)

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

There is a difference between desire and desperation.
—Tyra Banks (American Supermodel)

No one has ever proved that a human being, through his descent from a certain group of people, must of necessity have certain mental characteristics.
—Franz Boas (American Anthropologist)

The greatest gift you and your partner can give your children is the example of an intimate, healthy, and loving relationship.
—Barbara De Angelis (American Psychologist)

Justice is incidental to law and order.
—J. Edgar Hoover (American Government Official)

The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

No race can prosper ’til it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling the field, as in writing a poem.
—Booker T. Washington (African-American Educationist)

There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
—E. O. Wilson (American Sociobiologist)

A beautiful young lady is an act of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art.
—Louis Nizer (American Lawyer, Author)

A tyrannical sultan is better than constant anarchy.
—Egyptian Proverb

Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim.
—Albert Memmi (Tunisian Novelist)

This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable byproduct of all virtuous endeavor.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)