Inspirational Quotations

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

Love can never grow old. Locks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter’s frost and chill, summer’s warmth is in them still.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

As a company grows from 25 to 50 to 100 to 200 to 500 to 1000 people, the characteristics of who is the very best talent in leadership roles will change. It’s rarely the case that your leadership team at 1000 people is the same leadership team you had at 25 people.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.
—Demosthenes (Greek Statesman, Orator)

One cloud is enough to eclipse all the sun.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

Religion divides, creates discord, but spirituality unites.
—Dada J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time.
—Shunryu Suzuki (Buddhist Monk, Author)

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.
—Peter Medawar (British Immunologist, Writer)

No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.
—Hermes Trismegistus (Greek-Egyptian Author)

Speech emanating from a pure heart and mind of learned men and scholars are naturally pure just like water of a river.
—The Vedas (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.
—Carrie Fisher (American Actress)

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
—Daniel O’Connell (Irish Statesman)

Economic independence doesn’t set anyone free. Or it shouldn’t, for the higher up you go, the more responsibilities become yours.
—Bernard F. Gimbel (American Businessman)

Money is a result, wealth is a result, health is a result, illness is a result, your weight is a result. We live in a world of cause and effect.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Although one may fail to find happiness in theatrical life, one never wishes to give it up after having once tasted its fruits.
—Anna Pavlova (Russian Ballerina)

We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.
—Martin Luther King III (American Human Rights Advocate)

My bad habits aren’t my title, my strengths and talents are my title.
—Layne Staley (American Musician)

Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
—Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary)

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
—Agnes de Mille (American Dancer)

To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world, is just as base as to use force… Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
—Hypatia of Alexandria (Greek Philosopher, Mathematician)

Freedom is no heritage. Preservation of freedom is a fresh challenge and a fresh conquest for each generation. It is based on the religious concept of the dignity of man. The discovery that man is free is the greatest discovery of the ages.
—C. Donald Dallas (American Industrialist)

There’s as much risk in doing nothing as in doing something.
—F. Trammell Crow (American Businessman)

In the racial picture things will never be as they once were. History has reached a turning point, here and over the world.
—Medgar Evers (American Activist)

We have no right to say that the universe is governed by natural laws, but only that it is governed according to natural laws.
—William Benjamin Carpenter (English Biologist)

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.
—Marlon Brando (American Actor)

The perfect way is without difficulty, for it avoids picking and choosing. Only when you stop liking and disliking will all be clearly understood. Be not concerned with right or wrong, for the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.
—Jianzhi Sengcan (Chinese-Buddhist Monk)

The only menace is inertia.
—Saint-John Perse (French Poet)

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts.
—Arthur A. Kent (American Inventor)

Reality is, after all, too big for our frail understanding to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, we have to build our life on the theory which contains the maximum truth. We cannot sit still because we cannot, or do not, know the Absolute Truth.
—Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian Nationalist Leader)

Remember this: your body is your slave; it works for you.
—Jack LaLanne (American Fitness Guru)

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Matsuo Basho (Japanese Poet)

There is more similarity in the marketing challenge of selling a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible.
—A. Alfred Taubman (American Businessman)

For national leaders it is sometimes easier to fight than to talk. Impatient cries for total victory are usually more popular than the patient tolerance required of a people whose leaders are seeking peaceful change down the intricate paths of diplomacy.
—Harlan Cleveland (American Diplomat)

Opportunities are seldom labeled.
—John Augustus Shedd (American Author)

Dream big and dare to fail.
—Norman D. Vaughan (American Sportsman, Explorer)

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
—Colley Cibber (English Playwright)

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
—John Barth (American Novelist)

Having a baby is like falling in love again, both with your husband and your child.
—Tina Brown (British-American Journalist, Editor)

I have been extraordinarily lucky. Anyone who pretends that some kind of luck isn’t involved in his success is deluding himself.
—Arthur Hailey (Canadian Novelist)

If we take care of the inches we will not have to worry about the miles.
—Hartley Coleridge (British Poet)

Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
—James J. Ling (American Businessman)

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.
—C. William Pollard (American Businessman, Author)

For disorder obstructs: besides, it doth disgust life, distract the appetities, and yield no true relish to the senses.
—Margaret Lucas Cavendish (English Aristocrat, Philosopher, Writer)

We have to recognize accident, i.e., the fact that there is no formula, no ‘principle’, which covers all things; that there is no totality or system of things. And this recognition at once supports a life of ‘responsibility and adventure’ and leads to scientific discovery.
—John Anderson (Scottish Philosopher)

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.
—Steve Allen (American Entertainer)

The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.
—Ashleigh Brilliant (British Cartoonist)

The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired.
—John La Farge (American Artist, Writer)

We live by the Golden Rule. Those who have the gold make the rules.
—Buzzie Bavasi (American Baseball Executive)

Closer than a touch on your skin,
deeper than a breathe you draw in;
stronger than a hurricane wind,
is the dwelling of God within.
—Isaac de Benserade (French Poet, Dramatist)

Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.
—Brad Pitt (American Actor)

In a culture where the possibility of wealth and the acquisition of things are so defining of success, we end up pursuing things that, even if we are successful, can never deliver what we envisioned they would. The reason riches become such a snare is because we end up evaluating life in mercenary terms and being seen by others in such terms, and life is just not so.
—Ravi Zacharias (Christian Preacher)

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks.
—Arthur Dehon Little (American Management Consultant)

As you go along your own road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance … . But no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still—and persevere.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

What we play is life.
—Louis Armstrong (American Jazz Musician)

Your mind is what makes everything else work.
—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (American Basketball Player)

The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.
—George R. R. Martin (American Writer)

I’ve met these people, the ones from the glossy magazines. I’ve walked among them. I have seen, firsthand, their callow, empty lives. I have watched them from the shadows when they thought themselves alone. And I can tell you this: I’m afraid there is not one of them who would swap lives with you at gunpoint.
—Neil Gaiman (British Writer)

Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.
—The Panchatantra (Indian Collection of Fables)

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.
—Bill Russell (American Basketball Champion)

All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
—David Brower (American Environmentalist)

A person’s worth is contingent upon who he is, not upon what he does, or how much he has. The worth of a person, or a thing, or an idea, is in being, not in doing, not in having.
—Alice Mary Hilton (British-American Academic)

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don’t talk about it.
—Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (German Baritone)

A king who trusts no man is weak.
—Patricia Briggs (American Writer)

Money alone cannot build character or transform evil into good. It cries for full partnership with leaders of character and good will who value good tools in the creation and enlargement of life for Man.
—Sebastian S. Kresge (American Businessman)

Unfortunately in this kind of work, where you are trying to determine relationships based upon past behavior, the almost invariable experience is that by the time you have had a long enough period to give you sufficient confidence in your form of measurement, just then new conditions supersede and the measurement is no longer dependable for the future.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Doing one’s duty, however small, in an unattached manner gives rise to the awakening of self-awareness.
—Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

I believe in prayer. It’s the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.
—Josephine Baker (American Dancer, Campaigner)

He is great who can do what he wishes; he is wise who wishes to do what he can.
—August Wilhelm Iffland (German Actor, Playwright)

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

The closer the bird is to the surface of the water, the firmer and more inelastic is the uplift of the rising air. The bird appears to almost feel the surface with the tip of its weather wing.
—Lawrence Hargrave (Australian Aviation Pioneer)

Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.
—Edward A. Fox ((b.1936) American Businessman)

We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It’s the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It is ridiculous ever to forget that you and your business are each implanted in the society of the moment…. We cannot ignore the world of our time. We had better understand it.
—J. Irwin Miller (American Industrialist)

In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a “child of darkness” who is equal and complementary to the more obvious “child of light”.
—Laurens van der Post (South African Explorer, Writer)

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

Inaction is bad leadership, but it can feel safer than action because to act is to open yourself up to criticism.
—Jeffrey Immelt (American Businessperson)

All natural objects … all forms, colours, and scents … are types of some spiritual truth or existence.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Remember that pain has this most excellent quality: if prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing, and for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Calculation never made a hero.
—John Henry Newman (British Theologian, Poet)

Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (American Poetaster, Author)

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
—Christopher Hampton (British Playwright, Screenwriter)

I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that’s love, even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)

We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature, gloamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes.
—James Fenimore Cooper (American Novelist)

Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful, blows for blows will touch thee.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong. If the Government or majorities think an individual is right, no one will interfere with him; but when agitators talk against the things considered holy, or when radicals criticise, or satirize the political gods, or question the justice of our laws and institutions, or pacifists talk against war, how the old inquisition awakens, and ostracism, the excommunication of the church, the prison, the wheel, the torture-chamber, the mob, are called to suppress the free expression of thought.
—Harry Weinberger (American Lawyer)

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Head of State)

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it.—It unloosens the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s task in another’s hands.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Live while you live, the epicure would say, and seize the pleasures of the passing day.—Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, and give to God each moment as it flies.—Lord, in my views, let both united be. I live in pleasure while I live to thee.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
—Horace Greeley (American Journalist)

If it were not for hope, the heart would break.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and use of such of her forces as we may understand.
—Beryl Markham (English-African Aviator)

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will of renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while.
—Antonin Sertillanges (French Catholic Philosopher)

Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.
—Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian Author)

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet.
—Chinese Proverb

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world—it is thin.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (American Poet)

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)

All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Nought venture nought have.
—John Heywood

A house of which one knew every room wasn’t worth living in.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him.
—Czeslaw Milosz (Polish-American Poet, Novelist)

To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
—John Tillotson