Inspiring Quotations-Some of My Favorites!

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INSPIRING QUOTATIONS | Irene Becker, www.justcoachit.com

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“Inspiration and genius–one and the same.”
Victor Hugo

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

“Man’s excellence is not an endowment with which he comes into the world. It is rather a development which he must attain through his own efforts.  The Maharal

“The peak experience is always associated with fulfilled purpose.”
Colin Wilson

“A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists.  When his work is done, his aim is fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves.”  Lau Tzu from Tao Te Ching

“Do or do not do.  There is no try.” Yoda 

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”  John F. Kennedy

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  Dwight E. Eisenhower

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Albert Einstein

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.” Kahlil Gibran

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.   Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“Adventure is worthwhile.” Amelia Earhart

“Nothing endures but change.”  Heraclitus

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”  Nelson Mandela

“Resolve to be a master of change rather than a victim of change.”  Brian Tracy

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  Margaret Mead

“Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Harold R. McAlindon

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18

COURAGE, EMPOWERMENT

“All men dream:  but not all equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was all vanity; but the dreams of the day are dangerous…for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
T.E Lawrence

“Build up virtue and you master all.”  Lau Tzu from Tao Te Ching

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretsky

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”   Ann Landers

“Always do right – this will gratify some and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain

“Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt and dance like no one is watching.” Randall G Leighton

“When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.” Duke Ellington

“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
Joshua J. Marine

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” Bernice Johnson Reagon 

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.”  Anonymous

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“In order to be walked on, you have to be lying down.”  Brian Weir

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”  John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. ” Albert Einstein

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller

“It is funny about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the very best, you will very often get it.” William Somerset Maugham

“In the end, what we regret most are the chances we never took.”  Frasier Crane

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.” Unknown

“Leap and the net will appear.” Zen Saying

“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, `Grow, grow.” The Talmud

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr Seuss

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”  Theodore Roosevelt

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” Samuel Johnson

“Hope is the dream of a man awake.”French Proverb

“A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.”  Latin Proverb

“If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you”Friedrich Nietzche

“The more a man knows, the more he forgives.” Catherine the Great

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.” Thomas Carlyle

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”Chinese Proverb

“A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.”  Anonymous

“The storm also beats on the house that is built on the rock.”  Anonymous

“He who flings mud, loses a lot of ground.”
Anonymous

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.”
Emily Dickenson

“The toughest part of getting to the top of the ladder, is getting through the crowd at the bottom.”  Anonymous

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” Anonymous

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”  Plutarch

“Remember when you see a man at the top of a mountain, he didn’t fall there.” Anonymous

“The best things in life aren’t things.”   Art Buchwald

“It all depends on whether you have things, or they have you.”  Robert A. Cook

“Attitude determines altitude”  Anonymous

“He who has hope has everything.” Arabian Proverb

“Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”Anonymous

“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”  Allan K. Chalmers

“Don’t ask for a light load, but rather ask for a strong back.”
Anonymous

“A big shot is a little shot that kept shooting.”  Anonymous

“Full effort is full victory.” Mahatma Gandhi

“ Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.”Anonymous

“If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.” Jonathan Winters

“If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.”  Tom Peters

“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” Demosthenes

“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
Sir Francis Bacon

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  Winston Churchill

“The way to succeed is to double your error rate.”  Thomas J. Watson

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”  Oscar Wilde

“Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something.” Plato

“What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him.”  Louis L. Mann

“There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is.”  William George Jordan

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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

SUCCESS and FULFILLMENT

“Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” Marva Collins

“Begin with the end in mind”  Stephen Covey

“Fortune favors the brave.”  Publius Terence

“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” Albert Einstein

“To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”  Pierre Corneille

“He who dares nothing need hope for nothing.”  Anonymous

“Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.” Anonymous

“Seldom does an individual exceed his own expectations.” Anonymous

”The great and glorious masterpiece of man man is to know how to live to purpose.”  Michel de Montaigne

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretsky

“A skillful man reads his dreams for self-knowledge, yet not the details but the quality.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You’re happiest while you’re making the greatest contribution.”  Robert F. Kennedy

“What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.” Seneca

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. ”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

”If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin”. Ivan Turgenev

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart” Confucius

“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  Winston Churchill

“He who has never learned to obey,cannot be a good commander.”  Aristotle

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

“You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.” Author Unknown

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.”  David Ogilvy

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Benjamin Franklin

“You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.” Henry D. Thoreau

“He who hesitates is lost.” Proverb

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Confucius

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.” William James

“The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.” Kahil Gibran

“No man was ever wise by chance.” Seneca

“Beauty is the gift of God.” Aristotle

“There is no beauty but the beauty of action.”   Proverb

INSPIRATION, IMAGINATION

“Inspiration and genius–one and the same.” Victor Hugo

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”Albert Einstein

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”  Mark Twain

“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”  Maya Angelou

“It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”   J. K. Rowling

“The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.”  William Hazlitt

“Minds are like parachutes, they function only when open.” Anonymous

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Henry David Thoreau

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”  Annie Dillard

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe, from “Faust”

“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Anonymous

“The only job where you start at the top, is digging a hole.” Anonymous

“Our waking hours form the text of our lives, our dreams, the commentary.”Anonymous

“Those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war.”   Dr. Martin Luther King

“If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be.” Anonymous

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard

“The beauties of the world are best seen by those who strive to reach them.”Anonymous

“The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished.” Anonymous

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” Abraham Lincoln

“You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove instead to be the greatest investment that you will ever make.” Gorden B. Hinkley

“A strong person and a waterfall always channel their own path.”  Anonymous

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.” Anonymous

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” Walter Winchell

“Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”  Margaret B. Runbeck

“It is not length of life, but depth of life.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“May you live all the days of your life.”  Jonathan Swift

“A man is not old until regrets start taking place of dreams.” Anonymous

“We get to make a living; we give to make a life.”  Winston Churchill

“The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others. ” Mohandas K. Gandhi

“I will cause you to walk in the straight way…
I will open to you the gates of righteousness..
For whoever find Me, finds life.”  Psalm 118:19; Proverbs. 8: 35-6

“In thought, faith
In word, wisdom
In deed, courage
In life, service.”
Anonymous

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”   Thomas Jefferson

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” Mark Twain

“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.” Edgar J. Mohn

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Mohandas K. Gandhi

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.” Pearl S. Buck

“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.” Anonymous

“The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”  Lao Tzu

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”  Jim Rohn

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Mahatma Gandhi

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”  Elbert Hubbard

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.”  Benjamin Disraeli

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of Justice.”Martin Luther King

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life, you will have been all of these.”George Washington Carver

“You learn as much from those who have failed as from those who have succeeded.” Michael Johnson

“Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.”  Helen Keller

“Some men see things the way they are and ask, “Why?” I dream things that ‘never were, and ask “Why not?”  George Bernard Shaw

“A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness. ”  Zadok Rabinwitz

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”  John Lubbock

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  Proverbs

“Now is the time. Needs are great, but your possibilities are greater.” Bill Blackman

“We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.”Anne Sophie Swetchine

”The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.” W. R. Inge 

“It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.” Henry Ward Beecher

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” Laertius Diogenes

“My friends are my estate.”  Emily Dickinson

“Never live in the past but always learn from it.” Unknown

“Wisdom is supreme; therefore make a full effort to get wisdom. Esteem her and she will exalt you; embrace her and she will honor you.”  Proverbs 4:7-8

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”  James Oppenheim

“You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.” Leroy Eldridge Cleaver

“The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.”  Marian Wright Edelman

“There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.” Ernest J. Gaines

“It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.” (July 4, 1960) John F. Kennedy

“The New Frontier I speak of is not a set of promises–it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intent to ask of them.” John F. Kennedy

“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  John F. Kennedy

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”  Abraham Lincoln

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”  Abraham Lincoln

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”  Golda Meir

To know the road ahead ask those coming back. Chinese Proverb

“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.”  Winston Churchill

No man ever listened himself out of a job.”.Calvin Coolidge

“Hitch your wagon to a star”    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Either do as your neighbors do, or move away.  Moroccan Proverb

“What you cannot enforce, do not command.”  Socrates

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”  Susan B. Anthony

“Where there is great love there are always miracles.”  Willa Cather

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” Anais Nin

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” Anais Nin

“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” George Sand

“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.” Abigail Van Buren

“When our memories outweigh our dreams we become old.” Bill Clinton

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength.”  Jonathan Swift

“The only way around is through.” Robert Frost

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce. Anonymous

“BELIEVE while others are doubting.
PLAN while others are playing.
STUDY while others are sleeping.
DECIDE while others are delaying.
PREPARE while others are daydreaming.
BEGIN while others are procrastinating.
WORK while others are wishing.
SAVE while others are wasting.
LISTEN while others are talking.
SMILE while others are frowning.
COMMEND while others are criticizing.
PERSIST while others are quitting.”
William Arthur Ward

“Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.” Benjamin Disraeli

“For those to whom much is given, much is required.” (Jan 9, 1961) John F. Kennedy

“You don’t drown by falling in water; you only drown if you stay there.”  Zig Ziglar

“Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”  John F. Kennedy

“Freedom is never given; it is won.”  A. Phillip Randolph

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”  George Washington Carver

“People see God every day, they just don’t recognize him.” Pearl Bailey

“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”  James Baldwin

“Nothing will work unless you do.” Maya Angelou

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” Winston Churchill

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” Winston Churchill

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” Winston Churchill

INSPIRING QUOTATIONS | Irene Becker, www.justcoachit.com

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