I’m a bit of a quote freak, and I know many of you out there are as well (it’ll be our little secret).
With the power to spur you into action when moments before you had nothing left to give, improve your perspective on life, or simply turn a droopy face into a beaming smile, quotes are pretty much the coolest thing you can read in under 5 seconds.
I start my mornings by reading a new quote, but I want to stop being a quote horder and spread the love around, so here are a few of my favorite ones guaranteed to make you smile, laugh, or maybe even change your direction entirely.
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“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean
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“It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.” – Dalai Lama
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“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson
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“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” – Khalil Gibran
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“Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” – Brian Tracey
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“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl
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“Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
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“Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. – Francesca Reigler
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“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.” – Winston Churchill
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“Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.” -Eckhart Tolle
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“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
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“As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” – Andrew Carnegie
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“All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them but confront them.” – William F. Halsey
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“Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now.” – Jonatan Mårtensson
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“There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.” – Maria Edgeworth
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“There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.” – Mignon McLaughlin
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“Do it, and then you will feel motivated to do it.” – Zig Ziglar
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“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.” – Alfred Adler
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“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” -Frank Tibolt
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“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.” – Jim Rohn
- “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “The satisfied, the happy, do not live; they fall asleep in habit, near neighbor to annihilation.” -Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1913
- “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” – Arnold H. Glasow
- “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, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown
- “It is never too late to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot
- “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” – Bruce Lee
- “ The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs.” – Vance Havner
- “When people say to me: “How do you do so many things?” I often answer them, without meaning to be cruel: “How do you do so little?” It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” – Philip Adams
- “Establishing goals is all right if you don’t let them deprive you of interesting detours.” – Doug Larson
- “Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.” -Yiddish Proverb
- “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Everyone must choose one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” – Jim Rohn
- “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically – to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good.’ – Stephen Covey
- “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.” – Jim Rohn
- ”There is only one success–to be able to spend your life in your own way.” – Christopher Morley
- “I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather
- “If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee
- “We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.” – David Sarnoff
- “You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.” -Robert Alton Harris
- “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.” – Cynthia Nelms
- “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Openheim
- “The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable.” – Roux
- “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
- “I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.” – Ken Venturi
- “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” – Epictetus
- “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
- “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” – Mother Teresa
- “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” – Steven Furtick
Did I overlook your favorite quote? Leave it in the comment box below – I’ll be constantly updating this list with your submissions.
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’ ” – Muhammad Ali
“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” – The Cheshire Cat
Don’t go “halfway” with anything you do. Either go “all out” or not at all. Your “whole heart” always beats your “half ass” – Martin Rooney
Thanks for the assist, Tom! Adding those soon.
“Success is not final and failure is not fatal” Joe Paterno
I have no idea who said this originally or in what context they intended, but something that has always come back to me during my training life:-
“If you’ve truly convinced yourself you can – or can’t – do something, you’re probably right.”
“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face”
While not a truly motivational/uplifting quote, I’ve always been partial to a quote from one of Steve Pressfield’s books:
“It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.”
— Telamon of Arcadia
I find it keeps me on track.
Great list Roger!
do or do not, there is no try
~Yoda
“Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -by thought, choice, courage, and determination.” -H.J. Brown
Obviously late to the party on this one, but I’m facepalming for not remembering it sooner, given that it’s a key description of my approach to training (and all other worthwhile life pursuits).
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Great one!
“Every challenge is good news! Every obstacle is a gift; every conflict is an opportunity to exert, access grace and gain strength.” – Dennis Deaton
Love this one!
I am a quote freak too….and post a lot of them on my Facebook page…my personal favorite, as you know from my article, is by Abraham Lincoln….”And in the end it is not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years.”