101 inspirational quotes that will motivate you to greatness

Happy Friday! Back in 2018, we wrote a piece titled, “33 Best Inspirational Quotes For Startups And Entrepreneurs.” Surprisingly, it was one of the most read articles we’ve ever published. However, we do recognize that some of our readers are not startup founders. However, deep down inside us, we’re all entrepreneurs at heart. We all embark on one or a few projects in life. We bear the risks and enjoy the rewards.

The point is that things don’t always go the way we want. Life is like a roller coaster. Someday, you’re on the mountain top and another we found ourselves in the valley and things didn’t work out as planned. And that’s why we want to share 132 (sorry not 101) inspirational quotes that will motivate you to never give up.

These quotes come from people from all walks of life and multiple sources online. We hope these quotes inspire you as you travel through your journey in life. So, when you find yourself in the valley of life, turn to this list of quotes for the inspiration and motivation you need to be the best you can be.

1. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” –Mark Twain
2. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein
3. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” –Steve Jobs
4. “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” –Charles Swindoll
5. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”- Albert Einstein
6. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ―Thomas A. Edison
7. “An unexamined life is not worth living.” –Socrates
8. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Never waste a minute thinking about people you don’t like”. – Dwight Eisenhower
9. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” — David Brinkley
10. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” –Stephen Covey
11. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” –Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister
12. “Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.” –Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
13. “One can get anything if he is willing to help enough others get what they want.” –Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker and Author
14. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin
15. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” –Jim Rohn
16. “If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.” — Jeff Bezos
17. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” –Albert Einstein
18. “To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.”–Richard Branson
19. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost
20. “First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” –Aristotle
21. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” –Florence Nightingale
22. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” –Zig Ziglar
23. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” –Amelia Earhart
24. “Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” –W. Clement Stone
25. “We become what we think about.” –Earl Nightingale
26. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” –Babe Ruth
27. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, and catch the trade winds in your sails.” Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain
28. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker
29. “You become what you believe.” –Oprah Winfrey
30. “The mind is everything. What you think you become.” –Buddha
31. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” –Chinese Proverb
32. “I’ve missed more than 9000 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
33. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
34. “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” –Vince Lombardi
35. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” –Pablo Picasso
36. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” — Coco Chanel
37. “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” – John Wooden
38. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” –Steve Jobs
39. “Courage is grace under pressure.” — Ernest Hemingway
40. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” Jim Rohn
41. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” — Albert Einstein
42. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” — Swami Vivekananda
43. “Sometimes you can’t see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.” — Ellen DeGeneres
44. “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
45. “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
46. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”- Winston Churchill
47. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” — Warren Buffett
48. “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” –Japanese Proverb
49. “Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” — Vaibhav Shah
50. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
51. “Success? I don’t know what that word means. I’m happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody’s eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That’s a good day for me.” — Denzel Washington
52. “Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
53. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West
54. “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” –Christopher Columbus
55. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
56. “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
57. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
58. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” –Henry Ford
59. “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
60. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” –Aristotle
61. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus
62. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
64. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck
65. Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. –Booker T. Washington
66. “Certain things catch your eye but pursue only those that capture the heart.” – Ancient Indian Proverb
67. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
68. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
69. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
70. Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides
71. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
72. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
73. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser
74. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller
75. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius
76. How wonderful it is that nobody needs wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
77. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
78. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou
79. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” –Anais Nin
80. “Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” –Dalai Lama
81. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg
82. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” –John Lennon
83. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
84. You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
85. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” –Wayne Gretzky
86. “We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” –Marie Curie
87. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
88. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington
89. 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
90. “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” –Jamie Paolinetti
91. “You take your life into your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.” –Erica Jong
92. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan
93. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
94. “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” –Bill Cosby
95. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” –Les Brown
96. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
97. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
98. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” –George Eliot
99. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” –Vincent van Gogh
100. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
101. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers
102. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
103. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
104. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself–the invisible battles inside all of us–that’s where it’s at. –Jesse Owens
105. Education costs money. But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
106. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks
107. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
108. 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
109. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
110. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
111. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
112. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
113. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
114. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. –Tony Robbins
115. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
116. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
117. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
118. “A year from now you will wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
119. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
120. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
121. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
122. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
123. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
124. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
125. “Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is potential.” – Muhammad Ali
126. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
127. Everything around you that you call life was made up by people, and you can change it.
128. Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. – Lao Tzu
129. Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy. – Robert Tew
130. One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now. – Paulo Coelho
131. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
132. “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity no matter how impressive their other talents.” – Andrew Carnegie