Motivational quotes can make a surprisingly big difference, lifting your spirits when you’re down and encouraging you to even greater heights when you’ve hit a plateau.
That’s because success is an outcome. Becoming successful–however you choose to define “success,” since everyone’s definition should be different–starts with belief in yourself, in your ideas, and in the people around you.
Here are 99 great motivational quotes to draw inspiration from when you need a lift:
- Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. – John C. Maxwell
2. Ambition alone doesn’t work. Missions do. – Kunal Shah, FreeCharge
3. Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. – John F. Kennedy
4. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. – Peter F. Drucker
5. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. – Albert Schweitzer
6. When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow. – Jerry Porras
7. A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. – John Maxwell
8. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. – George Patton
9. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. -William Arthur Ward
10. Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone. -Gertrude Stein
11. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. -John E. Southard
12. Keep your eyes open and try to catch people in your company doing something right, then praise them for it. – Tom Hopkins
13. You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
14. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over. – Richard Branson, Virgin Group Founder
15. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
16. If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. – Jim Rohn
17. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life–think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. – Swami Vivekananda
18. If you are willing to do more than you are paid to do, eventually you will be paid to do more than you do. – Anonymous
19. Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
20. Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them. – Vaibhav Shah
21. Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value. – Albert Einstein
22. It is never too late to follow your heart and chase your dreams. Remember age is just a number. – Chhavi Dang, Comm Sutra
23. The harder you work, the luckier you become. – Jerry Barber, Golfer
24. Falling down doesn’t make you a failure, but staying down does. – Pastor John Hagee
25. Fake It Until You Make It! Act As If You Had All The Confidence You Require Until It Becomes Your Reality. – Brian Tracy
26. Be sincere, not serious. – Chetan Bhagat
27. Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Too Much Of Today. – Will Rogers
28. It is not our abilities that show who we truly are. It is our choices. – Dumbledore
29. Great Men are not born great, they grow great. – Mario Puzo
30. Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me. Alright? You dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period. – Chris Gardner from Pursuit of Happyness
31. You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs
32. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life–think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. – Swami Vivekananda
33. Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. – John D. Rockefeller
34. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. – Albert Einstein
35. Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. – Robert Collier
36. 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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain
37. The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. – Bruce Lee
38. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. – Jim Rohn
39. The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. – Napoleon Hill
40. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. – Margaret Thatcher
41. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas A. Edison
42. What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail? – Robert Schuller
43. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. – Abraham Lincoln
44. Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them. -Marcus Aurelius
45. Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started. – David Allen
46. Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential. – John Maxwell
47. Success at the highest level comes down to one question: Can you decide that your happiness can come from someone else’s success? – Bill Walton
48. Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time … serenity, that nothing is. – Thomas Szasz
49. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. – William Arthur Ward
50. A leader … is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind. – Nelson Mandela
51. Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. – Colin Powell
52. Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas. – Margaret Thatcher
53. A leader is a dealer in hope. – Napoleon
54. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. – Theodore Roosevelt.
55. If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. – Henry David Thoreau
56. I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself. – Robert E. Lee
57. Consensus: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus? – Margaret Thatcher
58. If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing. – Brad Szollose
59. Give as few orders as possible. Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject. – Frank Herbert
60. The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes. – Tony Blair
61. Wisdom equals knowledge plus courage. You have to not only know what to do and when to do it, but you have to also be brave enough to follow through. – Jarod Kintz
62. In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it. – Seth Godin
63. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
64. Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability. – Patrick Lencioni
65. Leadership is an action, not a position. – Donald McGannon
66. Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way. – Ronald Reagan
67. If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything. – Tom Rath
68. Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar. – Orrin Woodward
69. Don’t blow off another’s candle, for it won’t make yours shine brighter. – Jaachynma N.E. Agu
70. Low self-confidence isn’t a life sentence. Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered–just like any other skill. Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better. – Barrie Davenport
71. Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. – Andre Dubus
72. Do. Or not do. There is no try. – Yoda
73. Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy. – Jimmy Spithill
74. The best revenge is massive success. – Frank Sinatra
75. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. – Ayn Rand
76. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. – Steve Jobs
77. There is a difference between being a leader and being a boss. Both are based on authority. A boss demands blind obedience; a leader earns his authority through understanding and trust. – Klaus Balkenhol
78. You get in life what you have the courage to ask for. – Nancy D. Solomon
79. In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. – Max De Pree
80. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. – John Maxwell
81. Always remember, son, the best boss is the one who bosses the least. Whether it’s cattle or horses or men, the least government is the best government. – Ralph Moody
82. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. –Walt Disney
83. All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. – Helen Keller
84. All through your life, look at life as a ladder and reach for the stars. But reach back and help someone else make it to the next rung, especially other women. – Elsa Marie D’Silva, Safecity
85. What we fear of doing most is what is usually what we most need to do. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
86. Many fear competition from others. But the biggest critic should be the person in the mirror – Anonymous
87. Remember the one who gave up? Neither does anyone else. – Anonymous
88. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -Thomas Edison
89. Never give up what you want most for what you want today. – Neal A. Maxwell
90. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.- Bill Cosby
91. The road to success is always under construction- Lily Tomlin
92. When you plan to start your own business, you must let it consume you. – Rices Obliquity
93. Start by doing what is necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – St Francis of Assisi
94. Plans are nothing; planning is everything. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
95. Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. – Peter F. Drucker
96. The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. –Stephen Covey
97. Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
98. Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
99. Being young and cool is easy. But, being authentic isn’t. – Niraj Kakkar, Paperboat
Let us know what’s your daily dose of motivation in the comments below.
Team THS
