Sometimes, we all need a push in the right direction. And no, we’re not going down the route of playing a Mr. Motivator workout video at full volume (though, you do you). Getting your mindset in the optimal place for personal growth takes effort, sure, but it can be as easy as absorbing a few of the best motivational quotes.
Humans famously have a—let’s say tumultuous—relationship with motivation. One minute it’s present in concentrated amounts and we’re whirlwinding through our to-do list. And the next? Stillness—as if it were never there at all. But, all is not lost: a quick read of some thoughtfully-written encouraging quotes can have you right back on the figurative horse.
Indeed, you need only glimpse a Nike advert to get a slice of that often elusive but oh-so-necessary motivation. And, while we should all Just Do It, there are plenty more quotes that encourage, and often with a slightly more sophisticated approach.
There are countless occasions where a quarry of motivational quotes is indispensable: leading up to a marathon, before a job interview, or before making a drastic life change. Whether you note your favourite on the fridge, buy a piece of wall art, or simply write it on the back of your hand, the positive affirmation of a motivational quote is a literary cheerleader, there for you when you need it most (and don’t forget to read our best life quotes on happiness and inspirational quotes for even more inspiration).
So without further ado, we bring you the best motivational quotes from poets, authors, speakers, and those who have proved that our success is our own responsibility, and nobody else’s. Well, as the adage goes ‘dreams don’t work unless you do’—are we right?
101 encouraging quotes
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
— Nelson Mandela
- “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
— Walt Disney
- “You will never win if you never begin.”
— Helen Rowland
- “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
— Charles R. Swindoll
- “You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
— Ted Turner
- “Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.”
— Julie Andrews
- “Fortune sides with him who dares.”
— Virgil
- “Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.”
— Kyle Chandler
- “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”
— John D. Rockefeller
- “Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it.”
— Diane Sawyer
- “Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.”
— Norman Ralph Augustine
- “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
— Amelia Earhart
- “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
— Vidal Sassoon
- “I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.”
— Oprah Winfrey
- “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill
- “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”
— John F. Kennedy
- “Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
- “Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.”
— George S. Patton
- “Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.”
— Washington Irving
- “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
— Pablo Picasso
- “Success comes from having dreams that are bigger than your fears.”
— Bobby Unse
- “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
— C.S. Lewis
- “Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take the action. Take the action and your feelings will change.”
— Barbara Baron
- “If you have everything under control, you’re not moving fast enough.”
— Mario Andretti
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle
- “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.”
— Anatole France
- “The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.”
— Benny Lewis
- “People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
— Tony Robbins
- “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
— Lolly Daskal
- “A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.”
— Vince Lombardi
- “What would you do if you weren’t afraid.”
— Spencer Johnson
- “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
— George Bernard Shaw
- “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
— Jim Ryun
- “There is no traffic jam along the extra mile.”
— Roger Staubach
- “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
- “Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.”
— George Whitefield
- “Success is … knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.”
— John C. Maxwell
- “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
— Erica Jong
- “If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it — teach yourself to be impatient.”
— Gurbaksh Chahal
- “The starting point of all achievement is desire.”
— Napoleon Hill
- “Your focus determines your reality.”
— George Lucas
- “When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.”
— Lolly Daskal
- “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”
— Jamie Paolinetti
- “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
- “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
— George Addair
- “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
— Lyndon Johnson
- “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”
— Nido Qubein
- “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.”
— Robert Kiyosaki
- “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
— Margaret Thatcher
- “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”
— Francis Chan
- “If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary.”
— Jim Rohn
- “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
- “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”
— John C. Maxwell
- “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
— John D. Rockefeller
- “The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday.”
— Matty Mullens
- “There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.”
— Michael Phelps
- “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
— Muhammad Ali
- “More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin.”
— Orrin Woodward
- “Don’t downgrade your dream just to fit your reality. Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny.”
— Stuart Scott
- “There are only two options regarding commitment. You’re either in or you’re out. There is no such thing as life in-between.”
— Pat Riley
- “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
- “Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.”
— Mary Anne Roadacher-Hershey
- “Do or do not. There is no try.”
— Yoda
- “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
— Norman Vincent Peale
- “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
— Zig Ziglar
- “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
— Christopher Columbus
- “Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.”
— Theodore N. Vail - “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
— Amelia Earhart
- “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
— Albert Einstein
- “Don’t be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
— David Brinkley
- “Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”
— Benjamin Disraeli
- “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
— Abraham Lincoln
- “You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the further you get.”
— Michael Phelps
- “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
— Mister Rogers
- “Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it.”
— Henry David Thoreau
- “If you continue to think they way you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got.”
— Kevin Trudeau
- “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.”
— Estée Lauder
- “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
— John Wooden
- “Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.”
— Bern Williams
- “Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
— Joshua J. Marine
- “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
— Sam Levenson
- “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
- “I’ve missed more than 9,000 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
- “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
— Henry Ford
- “You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.”
— Diane Von Furstenberg
- “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
— Confucius
- “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.”
— Dalai Lama
- “The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.”
― Epicurus
- “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.”
― Vernon Sanders Law - “If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.”
— Steve Jobs
- “Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
— Stephen Covey
- “Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don’t settle for them.”
— Mia Hamm
- “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
— Tony Robbins
- “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”
— Pablo Picasso
- “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”
― Anne Lamott
- “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
— Stephen R. Covey
- “Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
- “The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning.”
— Pele
