motivate and inspire us to be our best.
Here are 38 of my absolute favorites:
1. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast
a stone across the water to create many ripples.”
—Mother Teresa
2. “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
3. “Whether you think you can or you think you
can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford
4. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase
perfection we can catch excellence.” —Vince
Lombardi
5. “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90
percent of how I react to it.” —Charles Swindoll
6. “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
7. “Remember no one can make you feel inferior
without your consent.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
8. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I
can adjust my sails to always reach my
destination.” —Jimmy Dean,
9. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m
possible’!” —Audrey Hepburn
10. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle
others, use your heart.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
11. “Too many of us are not living our dreams
because we are living our fears.” —Les Brown
12. “Do or do not. There is no try.” —Yoda
13. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and
believe, it can achieve.” —Napoleon Hill
14. “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, catch the trade winds
in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —Mark
Twain
15. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my
career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six
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
16. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of
value.” —Albert Einstein
17. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am
a product of my decisions.” —Stephen Covey
18. “When everything seems to be going against
you, remember that the airplane takes off against
the wind, not with it.” —Henry Ford
19. “The most common way people give up their
power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice
Walker
20. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act,
the rest is merely tenacity.” —Amelia Earhart
21. “It is during our darkest moments that we
must focus to see the light.” —Aristotle Onassis
22. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap
but by the seeds that you plant.” —Robert Louis
Stevenson
23. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s
who is going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand
24. “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
25. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will
hire you to build theirs.” —Farrah Gray
26. “Remember that not getting what you want is
sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” —Dalai
Lama
27. “A person who never made a mistake never
tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
28. “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
29. “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
30. “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
31. “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
32. “The only person you are destined to become
is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo
Emerson
33. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other
side of fear.” —George Addair
34. “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
35. “Nothing will work unless you do.” —Maya
Angelou
36. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” —
Theodore Roosevelt
37. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer
reality.” —Plutarch
38. “Control your own destiny or someone else
will.” —Jack Welch
A version of this article first appeared at
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