Let’s face it.
Quotes are the “thing” right now that, like a lot of things: look good on paper (and Internet memes).
Obviously no one quote will ever be that one quote that serves as the one answer to your entire interpersonal, professional, physical and personal/emotional life.
Obviously it’d be great if we could live our lives by the quotes we read (or post) but life’s great big story sometimes thwarts us into its plan-leaving us no times trying to scroll through our devices for the perfect quote to remedy or vices.
Well, be all that as it may, perhaps if we don’t think of them as “quotes” but rather: “words of wisdom” we can look at them as looking good in (our) life rather than just on paper as quotes words of wisdom can indeed inspire us to a happy, productive, or success-oriented mindset.
Here’s a list of quotes found about attitudes, challenges and determination that may very well inspire you to get you on your way to be motivated toward true success in your interpersonal, professional, physical, and personal/emotional life.
- “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman
- “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.” – Elon Musk
- “I often hear from new graduates that it’s better to wait until you have more experience … but I’m a big believer in the power of inexperience. … The world needs you before you stop asking nave questions and while you have the time to understand the true nature of the complex problems we face and take them on.” – Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America
- “I think in terms of evolutions, not revolutions. Failure is not part of my vocabulary.” – Shelia Lirio Marcelo, founder of Care.com
- “You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.” – Erica Jong
- “Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal, and I will give you a stock clerk.” – James Cash Penney, founder of J.C. Penney
- “It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble. … If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher … the law of averages, not to mention the Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
– Oprah Winfrey - “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” -Billie Jean King
- “I never dreamt of success. I worked for it.” -Estee Lauder
- “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “People talk about getting lucky breaks in their careers. I’m living proof that the ‘lucky breaks’ theory is simply wrong. You get to make your own luck. … The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.” -Steve Blank
- “Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.” – Gary Vaynerchuck
- “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” -Mark Twain
- “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” -Vince Lombardi
- “Both my mother and I were determined that we weren’t going to stay on welfare. We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would.” -Larry Ellison
- “What I’ve learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you’re hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.” -James Dyson
- “Most people give up just when they are about to achieve success. They quit on one yard line. They give up the at last minute of the game one foot from a winning touch down.” -H. Ross Perot
- “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” -Sir Winston Churchill
- “The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.” -Tim Ferriss
- “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Hoffman
- “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.”- Ray Kroc
- “The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.” – Debbi Fields
- “Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.” – Sean Parker
- “It’s irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.” – Vinod Khosla
- “In the movies, you want a good story and characters that are honest, but you are also looking for a good director who can lead the ship. That’s how we look at business. Everybody has a great idea for a start-up, and so do their relatives, and they tell me, ‘You gotta build it.’ I say, ‘I have to believe in it.'” – Ashton Kutcher
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.” – Walt Disney
- “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” -Biz Stone
- “Following is one of the most underrated aspects of leadership. … I have seen many a good [military unit] underachieve, because someone … thought the commander was incompetent, and quietly worked to undermine his authority.” -Admiral Bill McRaven
- “Data beats emotions” – Sean Rad, founder of Tinder
- “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” – Josh James, CEO & founder of Omniture and Domo
- “Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” – Unknown (but if you think you know who said it, email me)
- “I never took a day off in my 20s. Not one.” – Bill Gates
- “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” – Jeff Bezos
- “Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded.” – Paul Graham
- “You can’t make anything viral, but you can make something good.” – Peter Shankman
- “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.” – Sara Blakely
- “Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.” -Brian Chesky
- “For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn fast.” -Tony Hsieh
- “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti
- “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Proverb
- “Never be ashamed! There’s some who will hold it against you, but they are not worth bothering with.” – J.K. Rowling
- “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison
- “The biggest start-up successes–from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg–were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.” – Eric Ries
- “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein
- “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.” – President Abraham Lincoln
- “There are no working hours for leaders.” – James Cardinal Gibbons
- “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” – Dwight Eisenhower
- “I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.” – Harland Sanders
- “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.’ ” – Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of Github
- “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give–with a few exceptions–generalize whatever they did. … Just build things and find out if they work.” – Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest
- “Singleness of purpose is essential for success in life.” – John D. Rockefeller
- “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
- “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston, cofounder of Dropbox
- “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
- “Good is the enemy of great.” – Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
- “Nothing works better than just improving your product.” – Joel Spolsky, cofounder of Stack Overflow
- “There’s lots of bad reasons to start a company. But there’s only one good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is: it’s to change the world.” – Phil Libin, Evernote
- “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” – Roger Staubach
- “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” – Unknown
- “Your income is directly related to your philosophy, not the economy.” – Jim Rohn
- “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars–I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” – Warren Buffett
- “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.” – Seth Godin
- “There is no security on the Earth, there is only opportunity.” – General Douglas MacArthur
- “Being able to touch so many people through my businesses, and make money while doing it, is a huge blessing.” – Magic Johnson
- “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth
- “Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. Today it’s cheaper to start a business than ever.” – Noah Everett, founder of Twitpic
- “There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club
- “The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.” – H.G. Wells
- “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” – Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy
- “The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.” – Philip Knight
- “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” – Peter Drucker
- “Your time is precious, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
- “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” -Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr
- “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” – Mark Cuban
- “There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” – Jason Fried, founder of 37signals
- “Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.” – Arianna Huffington
- “If I have made a mistake in the design, then I’m the one who should pay for it. I certainly would not ask somebody else to fly a plane if I were afraid to do it myself.” – Howard Hughes
- “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
- “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
- “Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner.” – Lao Tzu
- “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley
- “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz
- “The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell.” – Andrew Carnegie
- “Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” – H. Jackson Browne h/t: Bill Murphy Jr.
