The 80 Best Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational quotes become quotes by distilling an important truth about human experience. These truths are often hard won and stand the test of time – they are relevant regardless of the challenge or the life you’re given.

Let yourself be inspired by the best of inspirational quotes, or share with a friend who could use a little spark.

 

1. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

2. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
― George Lorimer

3. “Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know, and thou shalt progress.”
― Maimonides

4. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
― Thomas Jefferson

5. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”
― Jim Rohn

6. “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.”
― Confucius

7. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
― Zig Ziglar

8. “The grass is greener where you water it.”
― Neil Barringham

9. “Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”
― Booker T. Washington

10. "Whatever you are, be a good one.”

11. “The Pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The Optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”
― Winston Churchill

12. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
― Michael Jordan

13. “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? ”
― L.M. Montgomery

14. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

15. “We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.”
― Earl Nightingale

16. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.”
― Rosa Parks

17. “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.”
― Thomas Edison

18. “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
― Francis Chan

19. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston Churchill

20. "Always do what you are afraid to do.”

21. “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.”
― Chris Grosser

22. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”
― John Maxwell

23. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
― Booker T. Washington

24. “The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.”
― Hasidic Proverb

25. “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama

26. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

27. “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

28. “No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.”
― Anonymous

29. “Do what you can with all you have, wherever you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

30. "Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

31. “Your problem isn’t the problem. Your reaction is the problem.”
― Anonymous

32. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.”
― Robert Collier

33. “Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more..”
― Nikola Tesla

34. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
― Dale Carnegie

35. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
― Amelia Earhart

36. “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
― George Bernard Shaw

37. “You will succeed because most people are lazy.”
― Shahir Zag

38. “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
― Howard Ruff

39. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

40. "I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”

41. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

42. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”
― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

43. “Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
― Helen Keller

44. “We generate fears while we sit. We overcome them by action.”
― Dr. Henry Link

45. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou

46. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
― Joshua J. Marine

47. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.”
― Mother Teresa

48. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
― Mark Twain

49. “I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath

50. "Nothing will work unless you do.”

51. “The talents we each have been blessed with can only be developed if we use them fully to benefit the lives of others as well as our own.”
― Karen Casey

52. “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”
― Abraham Lincoln

53. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

54. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
― Bruce Lee

55. “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
― Kenji Miyazawa

56. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
― Jim Rohn

57. “Like many things in life, your compassion is a skill that can be exercised.”
― Simeon Lindstrom

58. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
― Benjamin Franklin

59. “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
― Maya Angelou

60. "Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

61. “Reading is to the mind, as exercise is to the body.”
― Brian Tracy

62. “Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”
― Carl Bard

63. “Speak less than you know; have more than you show.”
― William Shakespeare

64. “Anyone who has ever made anything of importance was disciplined.”
― Andrew Hendrixson

65. “Champions keep playing until they get it right.”
― Billie Jean King

66. “I never dream of success. I worked for it.”
― Estee Lauder

67. “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”
― Oprah Winfrey

68. “You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.”
― Zig Ziglar

69. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
― Plutarch

70. "Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”

71. “Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.”
― Albert Schweitzer

72. “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”
― Ronald Reagan

73. “For every dream that you have, your week needs to match that dream.”
― Eric Thomas

74. “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity.”
― John F. Kennedy

75. “You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss

76. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

77. “Learn to be calm and you will always be happy.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda

78. “If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”
― Toni Morrison

79. “I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.”
― Dudley Field Malone

80. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

When inspiration strikes, make sure to catch it! Let yourself be motivated to action. These quotes are timeless because they reflect the reality of success – it’s a dance between action and inspiration, and one must always go with the other if we’re going to keep moving forward.

Help yourself develop inspiration and action with the Driven app.

All the best!

Chelsea

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