Top 100 Inspirational Quotes

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Kevin Kruse, Contributor

I write about wholehearted leadership and employee engagement.

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5/28/2013 @ 11:04AM |7,809,000 views

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Inspirational quotes and motivational quotes have the power to get us through a bad week, and can even  give us the courage to pursue our life’s dreams. In my book, 4 Keys to Happiness and Fulfillment at Work, I share surprising research into the true triggers of workplace motivation. So in the spirit of self motivation, here are 100 inspirational quotes.

1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
2. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
3. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
4. I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale
5. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
6. 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
7. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Emelia Earhart
8. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
9. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
10. The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now. –Bill Cosby
11. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
12. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
13. 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
14. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll
15. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
16. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha
17. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
18. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
19. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
20. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
21. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
22. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
23. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
24. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
25. 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
26. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
27. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
28. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
29. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
30. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
31. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
32. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin
33. 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
34. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
35. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus
36. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
37. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
38. 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
39. 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
40. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
41. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
42. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
43. 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
44. Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides
45. Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
46. 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 I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
47. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb
48. 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
49. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius
50. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
51. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
52. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou
53. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
54. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg
55. 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
56. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
57. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
58. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie
59. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
60. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
61. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington
62. 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
63. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
64. You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong
65. 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
66. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
67. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby
68. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
69. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
70. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach
71. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
72. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey
73. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
74. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
75. 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
76. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
77. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
78. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself–the invisible battles inside all of us–that’s where it’s at. –Jesse Owens
79. Education costs money.  But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
80. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks
81. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
82. 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
83. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
84. You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
85. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
86. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
87. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
88. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins
89. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
90. 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
91. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
92. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
93. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
94. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
95. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
96. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
97. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
98. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
99. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
100. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs
101. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar