It’s common to remember famous leaders and distinguished individuals by their accomplishments and wise quotes. The insights and experiences of successful leaders and professionals can be a valuable source of inspiration and motivation. Understanding how you can use quotes for guidance and encouragement may help you find inspiration at work, to overcome challenges or for lessons to grow as an individual.In this article, we provide 116 famous quotes to inspire and motivate you in your professional and personal life.
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25 famous quotes about pursuing dreams
Some famous quotes can provide you with valuable advice you can look to you’re pursuing your dreams:
- “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt
- “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
- “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” — Vince Lombardi
- “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford
- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
- “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” — Mother Teresa
- “You become what you believe.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart
- “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
- “An unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
- “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” — George Addair
- “Dream big and dare to fail.” — Norman Vaughan
- “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills
- “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
- “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” — Henry Ford
- “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” — Les Brown
- “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” — Rosa Parks
- “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” — Benjamin Franklin
- “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” — Sheryl Sandberg
- “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale
- “I would rather die of passion than of boredom
- .” — Vincent van Gogh
- “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” — Gloria Steinem
- “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill
- “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain
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30 memorable quotes about life
Life presents challenges that can affect your mood and desire to succeed. Use these quotes to help motivate you to persevere through them:
- “If life were predictable, it would cease to be life and be without flavor.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”— Charles Swindoll
- “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Abraham Lincoln
- “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” — Maya Angelou
- “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
- “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” — Babe Ruth
- “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” — Oscar Wilde
- “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” — Tony Robbins
- “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” — Mother Teresa
- “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” — Albert Einstein
- “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon
- “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West
- “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela
- “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius
- “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” — Hans Christian Andersen
- “Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life.” — John Wooden
- “Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.” — D. H. Lawrence
- “Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” — Marilyn Monroe
- “Life is a long lesson in humility.” — James M. Barrie
- “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” — Robert Frost
- “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.” — Bob Marley
- “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” — Helen Keller
- “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” — Dr. Seuss
- “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” — Charles Dickens
- “Life is trying things to see if they work.” — Ray Bradbury
- “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
- “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas Edison
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32 notable quotes about success
Positive thinking can help you succeed in your professional life. You may find it helpful to use these quotes to inspire you to work hard and pursue your goals:
- “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.” — John D. Rockefeller
- “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” — Thomas Jefferson
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney
- “Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember—the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.” — Zig Ziglar
- “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit.” — Conrad Hilton
- “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”” — Colin Powell
- “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” — Barack Obama
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” — Herman Melville
- “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” — Jim Rohn
- “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” — Colin R. Davis
- “I failed my way to success.” — Thomas Edison
- “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” — James Cameron
- “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” — Steve Jobs
- “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” — David Brinkley
- “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” — John Wooden
- “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller
- “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.” — Abraham Lincoln
- “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
- “You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it—teach yourself to be impatient.” Gurbaksh Chahal
- “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Vidal Sassoon
- “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
- “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” — Alexander Graham Bell
- “The key to success is to develop a winning edge.” — Brian Tracy
- “You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.” — Dale Carnegie
- “Success is a matter of sticking to a set of common-sense principles anyone can master.” — Earl Nightingale
- “Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.” — Stephen Covey
- “Your attitude is either the lock on or key to your door of success.” — Denis Waitley
- “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee
Related: 63 Hard Work Quotes To Help Motivate You and Achieve Success
13 helpful quotes about finding inspiration
Use these quotes if you require encouragement to conquer a challenging event or task:
- “It’s fun to do the impossible.” — Walt Disney
- “Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.” — John Ruskin
- “You put your intention and your attention on what it is that you want to shift and change.” — Wayne Dyer
- “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.” — Charles Dickens
- “To reach a port, we must sail—sail, not tie at anchor—sail, not drift.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Your brain is the most important organ in your body, and what happens in it determines what you think and feel, say and do.” — Rick Hanson
- “We tend to get what we expect.” — Norman Vincent Peale
- “Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see the shadow.” — Helen Keller
- “No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.” — Charles Kettering
- “Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.” — Seneca
- “Bad things are not the worst thing that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us.” — Richard Bach
- “Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.” — George Bernard Shaw
- “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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16 memorable quotes about working hard
Here are some quotes you can use to help boost your mood and work hard at achieving your dreams:
- “There are two ways you can get through the pain. You can let it destroy you, or you can use it as fuel to drive you: to dream bigger, work harder.” — Taylor Swift
- “Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is an opportunity and what isn’t.” — Lucille Ball
- “Age has given me the gift of me; it just gave me what I was always longing for, which was to get to be the woman I’ve already dreamt of being. Which is somebody who can do rest and do hard work and be a really constant companion, a constant, tender-hearted wife to myself.” — Anne Lamott
- “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” — Tim Notke
- “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou
- “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pele
- “I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.” — Susan L. Taylor
- “Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne Johnson
- “It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavor; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.” — Virginia Woolf
- “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” — Barack Obama
- “I’m really very self-confident when it comes to my work. When I take on a project, I believe in it 100%. I really put my soul into it. I’d die for it. That’s how I am.” — Michael Jackson
- “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life forever.” — Amy Poehler
- “There is no substitute for hard work.” — Thomas Edison
- “Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No Excuses.” — Kobe Bryant
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” — Dolly Parton
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