Motivation

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Thomas Jefferson

Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.

Richard Kline

For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.

Wallis Simpson

Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.

Henry Ward Beecher

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein

Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do.

Orison Swett Marden

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

William James

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave.

Publius Terence

Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

Norman Vincent Peale

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle

Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.

Jean Sibelius

Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Francis Bacon

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.

Peter Marshall

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

Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.

Swami Sivananda

You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.

Michael Jordan

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

Theodore Roosevelt

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

Andrew Carnegie

To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.

Sugar Ray Robinson

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

Confucius

We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.

Ollin Miller

Ideas shape the course of history.

John Maynard Keynes

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

Theodore Roosevelt

I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.

Allen H Neuharth

All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

Charles Dickens

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.

Christian Bovee

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Epicurus

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

George S Patton

What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

Robert Schuller

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.

Jessica Savitch

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

African Proverb

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Henry Ford

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Mohandas Gandhi

Knock the “t” off the “can’t.”

George Reeves

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do…. Build, therefore, your own world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.

Max Forman

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.

Peter Marshall

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.

Sydney Smith

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

Sally Kempton

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

Ralph Marston

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!

Audrey Hepburn

Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

Les Brown

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Walt Disney

Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.

Sophia Loren

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein

Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do.

Orison Swett Marden

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.

Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For hope is but the dream of those that wake.

Matthew Prior

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

Lucretius

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

Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.

Bo Jackson

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Lao Tzu

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Thomas Jefferson

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

Mark Caine

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

John F Kennedy

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.

Henry David Thoreau

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

Baltasar Gracian

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.

Tony Robbins

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Epictetus

One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.

Michael Korda

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.

Walter Elliot

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

Jimmy Dean

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Aristotle

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

Confucius

We will either find a way, or make one.

Hannibal

Leap, and the net will appear.

John Burroughs

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.

Mary Kay Ash

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.

Bruce Barton

It’s always too early to quit.

Norman Vincent Peale

You can’t expect to hit the jackpot if you don’t put a few nickels in the machine.

Flip Wilson

Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.

Peter McIntyre

Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.

Kyle Chandler

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.

Alexander the Great

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Ayn Rand

Follow your dreams, work hard, practice and persevere.

Sasha Cohen

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

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.

Wayne Dyer

Go big or go home. Because it’s true. What do you have to lose?

Eliza Dushku

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

Og Mandino

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

Norman Vincent Peale

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

Saint Teresa

Until you believe enough in yourself, nothing is going to change.

John DiLemme

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Anais Nin

Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.

Alfred Montapert

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Jim Rohn

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Jim Rohn

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.

St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

I’ve worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals.

Mia Hamm

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

John D Rockefeller

When you fail you learn from the mistakes you made and it motivates you to work even harder.

Natalie Gulbis

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.

Nicholas de Chamfort

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

Mark Twain

Just go out there and do what you’ve got to do.

Martina Navratilova

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

Thomas Alva Edison

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hilary

Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.

Gordon B. Hinckley

You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.

Ted Turner

I am not a has-been. I am a will be.

Lauren Bacall

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.

Adele Brookman

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

George S. Patton

Believe in yourself and you can achieve greatness in your life.

Judy Blume

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.

David Brinkley

Don’t live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.

Wendy Wasserstein