150+ Motivational and Inspirational Quotes

by Angela Atkinson

Every now and then, you just need a little boost. That’s why I’ve compiled this list of this expansive list of motivational and inspirational quotes–feel free to share!

Sometimes, a quote just calls to your soul. These are some of my favorite motivational and inspirational quotes. Enjoy!

Motivational and Inspirational Quotes I Love

1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
2. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine
3.     “The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”–Benjamin Mays
4. “By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.”–Mark Victor Hansen
5. “Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.”–William J. Bennett – The Book of Virtues
6. “The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.”–Robert L. Schwartz
7. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
8. “I don’t regret the things I’ve done, I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.” – Unknown
9. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
10. “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude.” – Denis Waitley
11. “Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.” Benjamin Disraeli
12. “Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.” –Orison Swett Marden
13. “Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?” -George Eliot
14. “No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
16. “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” – Bill Cosby
17. “Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” – Les Brown
18. The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’ -Jeffrey Bezos
19. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
20. “I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. Its because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein
21. “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”–Aristotle
22. “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.”–Charles R. Swindoll
23. 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
24. “Just know, when you truly want success, you’ll never give up on it. No matter how bad the situation may get.” – Unknown
25. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
26. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
27. “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield
28. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
29. “The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra
30. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
31. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain
32. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –John Maxwell
33. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins
34. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha
35. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
36. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
37. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
38. Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. –Napoleon Hill
39. “Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal — a commitment to excellence — that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”–Mario Andretti
40. “Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses… on your powers, instead of your problems.”–Paul J. Meyer
41. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. – Mahatma Gandhi
42. Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. – Napoleon Hill
43. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. – Truman Capote
44. Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare. – Japanese Proverb
45. In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.- Theodore Roosevelt
46. If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet. – Isaac B. Singer
47. “Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”--Hal Borland
48. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”–Calvin Coolidge
49. “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”–Pearl Buck
50. “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”–Vince Lombardi
51. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
52. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
53. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
54. “The only thing that stands between you and your dream is the will to try and the belief that it is actually possible.” – Joel Brown
55. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
56. “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
57. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
58. “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget
59. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou
60. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
61. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
62. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
63. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
64. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
65. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
66. Inspiration exists, but it must find you working. –Pablo Picasso
67. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh
68. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
69. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. –Henry Ford
70. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
71. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
72. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck
73. Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.  Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?” – Brian Tracy
74. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
75. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
76. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
77. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
78. Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. –Christopher Reeve
79. Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
80. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me
81. I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
82. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb
83. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller
84. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucious
85. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
86. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
87. The difference between a successful person and others is not lack of strength not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will. –Vince Lombardi
88. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
89. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. –Arthur C. Clarke
90. First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. –Aristotle
91. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
92. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
93. Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. –Vincent Van Gogh
94. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
95. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
96. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. –Walt Disney
97. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci
98. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
99. Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes.  You are free. –Jim Morrison
100. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan
101. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin

102. 

     In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby

103. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
104. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
105. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach
106. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
107. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey
108. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
109. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
110. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.  –Ann Landers
111. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
112. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
113. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. –Frank Zappa
114. Education costs money.  But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
115. Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
116. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
117. Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
118. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
     You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
119. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
120. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
121. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
122. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
123. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
124. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
125. 

     Even your face looks different when you lose this much.

     In every difficult situation is potential value. Believe this, then begin looking for it.

126. Norman Vincent PealeBelieve with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do. -Orison Swett Marden
127. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
128. We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls. -Winston Churchill
129. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
130. “Reach perfection.” -Baltasar Gracián
131. “For hope is but the dream of those that wake.” -Matthew Prior
132. “Constant dripping hollows out a stone.” -Lucretius
133. “Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose–a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” ~Mary Shelley
134. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
135. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
136. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
137. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
138. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
139. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
140. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
141. “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.” –Warren G. Bennis
142. I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become. -Oprah Winfrey
143. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -George Eliot
144. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” -Henry Stanley Haskins
145. “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”–John Kenneth Galbraith
146. “An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”–Thomas Fuller
147. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
148. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
149. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs
150. “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” -Walt Disney
151. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar

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