Motivational Quotes
Motivational quotes (alphabetically by surname)
A
"Make each day useful and cheerful and prove that you know the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be happy, old age without regret and life a beautiful success."
- Louisa May Alcott
"Nothing will work unless you do."
- Maya Angelou
"If you plan to learn, you must learn to plan."
- Anonymous
"Many fine things can be done in a day if you don't always make that day tomorrow."
- Anonymous
"Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it."
- Anonymous
"We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision."
- Anonymous
"Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids."
- Aristotle
"Happiness is activity."
- Aristotle
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle
"What drives you? Always believing that the company's best work is in front of us."
- Steve Averil
B
"Listen to everything a man has to say about what he knows, but don't let him advise you about what he doesn't know. And usually he doesn't know too much about what's best for you."
- Barney Balaban
"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
- Toni Cade Bambera
"Never take no for an answer and never give up. If you really believe in what you're doing, and you're really keen, then you'll succeed - it's as simple as that."
- Sir Peter Blake
"When people don’t take time out, they stop being productive."
- Carisa Bianchi
"If you are not working on your ideas each day, you’re working on someone else’s."
- Marjorie Blanchard
"The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent."
- Dr. Smiley Blanton
"You must tell yourself - no matter how hard it is, or how hard it gets, I'm going to make it."
- Les Brown
"Begin a difficult conversation by listening."
- Robert Buckman
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
- Warren Buffett
"You don't need to have extraordinary effort to achieve extraordinary results. You just need to do the ordinary, everyday things exceptionally well."
- Warren Buffett
"Good order is the foundation of all things."
- Edmund Burke
"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference."
- Nolan Bushness
"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."
- Nicholas Murray Butler
C
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."
- Winston Churchill
"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill
"There are plenty of good ideas, if only they can be backed with the power of action."
- Winston Churchill
"There is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure."
- Winston Churchill
"Anyone can want something; it's those who believe in their goals that achieve."
- Bill Clinton
"If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence." - Barbara Cook "When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."
- Confucius
"There’s nothing wrong with being realistic - as long as you create your own reality."
- Beth Mende Conny
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try and please everyone."
- Bill Cosby
"Plan! Write down the goals to which your plan will take you. Review it regularly and update it to make sure your market isn’t leaving you behind."
- Joy Cottle
"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."
- Stephen Covey
D
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own."
- Benjamin Disraeli E
"I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."
- Thomas Edison
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
- Thomas Edison
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
- Albert Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
"The truth is I've always had problems with authority. For better or worse I've done what I want to do and said what I want to say. But that kind of thinking has led to all the innovation I've contributed to at Oracle. My personality is such that I am not swayed just because all the experts say that I am wrong. Sometimes all the experts are wrong. Mark Twain once said 'What's an expert? Just some guy from out of town'. He was right."
- Larry Ellison
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit."
- Desiderius Erasmus
"To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage. The coward despairs."
- Euripides
"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all."
- Sam Ewing F
"You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis."
- Henry Ford
"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."
- Henry Ford
"Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right."
- Henry Ford
"If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it."
- Brendan Francis
"I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones."
- Viktor Frankl
"I try to do everything as soon as possible, and not at the last moment. This ensures that, when I am overburdened with work, I will not face the added pressure of knowing that something is still to be done."
- Viktor Frankl
"You may delay, but time will not."
- Benjamin Franklin
G
"The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips."
- John Paul Getty
"If you want employees to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others."
- Haim Ginott
"Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is; treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be."
- Goethe
"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."
- Vincent Van Gogh
"The harder I work, the luckier I get."
- Sam Goldwyn
H
"Family, friends, colleagues, bankers and lawyers may all have useful ideas and advice but at the end of the day you have to make your own decisions."
- Stelios Haji-loanno
"We will either find a way, or make one."
- Hannibal
"People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they've done."
- Cullen Hightower
"If you've got the ambition, the drive and plenty of training anyone can do it, that's the silly thing."
- Michael Hill
"Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel."
- Napoleon Hill
"The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face."
- Napoleon Hill
"If the going is tough and the pressure is on,
If the reserves of strength have been drained and
the summit is still not in sight,
then the quality to seek in the person is neither
great strength nor quickness of hand,
but rather a resolute mind firmly set on its purpose
that refuses to let its body slack or rest."
- Sir Edmund Hillary
"No nonsense, no mucking around. Just get in there and do it. Once everything else is in place, just keep your eyes on the prize."
- Sir Edmund Hillary
"The best preparation for good work tomorrow is good work today."
- Elbert Hubbard
I
J
"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect it's successful outcome."
- William James
"Entrepreneurs…are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of risk and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen."
- Dr. Robert Jarvik
"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."
- Steve Jobs
"If they (people) actually apply enough thinking time to it, they'll come up with the answer even if it involves a few false starts."
- Bob Jones
"The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going."
- David Starr Jordan
"Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that."
- Michael Jordan
K
"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."
- John F. Kennedy
"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."
- John F. Kennedy
"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not."
- Robert F. Kennedy
"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there."
- Charles Kettering
"My Rich Dad said to me, you can quit anytime you want to, why quit now?"
- Robert Kiyosaki
L
"What others call tough, I call persistent."
- Estee Lauder
"Money can buy pleasure, but pleasure isn't happiness. Happiness is a feeling that goes beyond pleasure."
- George Lucas
"Success demands singleness of purpose."
- Vince Lombardi
"Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."
- Vince Lombardi
M
"A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline."
- Harvey Mackay
"Encouragement is oxygen to the soul."
- Harvey Mackay
"Find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life."
- Harvey Mackay
"Hard work often leads to success. No work seldom does."
- Harvey Mackay
"Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act."
- Andre Malraux
"I sometimes compare my brainstorming on paper to the drilling of oil wells. The only way to strike oil is to drill a lot of wells."
- Tom Monaghan
"Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting."
Christopher Morley
"Success is about who you are, not what you have. Successful people work to discover their talents, to develop those talents, and then to use those talents to benefit others as well as themselves."
- Tom Morris
"The shorter way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time."
- Mozart
N
"The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests."
- A.J. Nock
O
"Great leaders almost always exude self-confidence. They are never petty. They are never buck-passers. They pick themselves up after defeat. They do not suffer from the crippling need to be universally loved."
- David Ogilvy
"If you always hire people that are bigger than you, you shall become a company of giants."
- David Ogilvy
P
"Chance favours the prepared mind."
- Louis Pasteur
"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown."
- H. Ross Perot
"My mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.’ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso."
- Pablo Picasso
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
- Pablo Picasso
"What you praise you increase."
- Catherine Ponder
"If the wind will not serve, take to the oars."
- Proverb
Q
R
"I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy."
- Anthony Robbins
"Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives."
- Anthony Robbins
"Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade."
- Anthony Robbins
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."
- Anthony Robbins
"Be daring. Be first. Be different."
- Anita Roddick
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
- Will Rogers
S
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
- L.P.Sanadhya
"Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power, a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment."
- Marsha Sinetar
"To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can."
- Sydney Smith
T
"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."
- Margaret Thatcher
"As long as you're going to be thinking anyway, think big."
- Donald Trump
"Losing is simply learning to win."
Ted Turner
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
- Mark Twain
U
V
W
"Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success."
- Denis Waitley
"Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances."
- J. Donald Walters
"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
- Andy Warhol
"Dreaming is wonderful, goal setting is crucial, but action is supreme. To make something great happen you must get busy and make it happen. Take that action step today that will put you on your path to achievement."
- Greg Werner
"We possess such immense resources of power that pessimism is a laughable absurdity."
- Colin Wilson
"Nothing happens until I make it happen."
- Scott Wilson
X
Y
"Do or do not; there is no try."
- Yoda
Z