Motivation refers to the driving force within a person that causes them to take action toward a desired goal or objective. It’s the internal or external stimulation that prompts individuals to take a particular course of action and persist in their efforts despite any obstacles or challenges that may arise. Motivation can come from a variety of sources, including personal desires, external rewards, and a sense of fulfillment or accomplishment. A person’s level of motivation is influenced by several factors, including their personal goals, interests, values, and attitudes, as well as environmental factors such as the availability of resources and support from others.
Motivational Quotes
1. “We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.”
— Albert Einstein
2. “Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
3. “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.”
— Mark Twain
4. “When you give joy to other people, you get more joy in return. You should give a good thought to happiness that you can give out.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
5. “When you change your thoughts, remember to also change your world.”
— Norman Vincent Peale
6. “It is only when we take chances, when our lives improve. The initial and the most difficult risk that we need to take is to become honest.
—Walter Anderson
7. “Nature has given us all the pieces required to achieve exceptional wellness and health, but has left it to us to put these pieces together.”
—Diane McLaren
8. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston S. Churchill
9. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
— Herman Melville
10. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.”
— Colin R. Davis
11. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it.”
— Henry David Thoreau
12. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
— Dale Carnegie
13. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
— Calvin Coolidge
14. “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
— Mister Rogers
15. “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
— John Wooden
16. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.”
— Estée Lauder
17. “Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.”
— W. P. Kinsella
18. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”
— Winston Churchill
19. “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
— Will Rogers
20. “You learn more from failure than from success. Don’t let it stop you. Failure builds character.”
— Unknown
21. “If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.”
— Steve Jobs
22. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”
— Vernon Sanders Law
23. “To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live.”
— Dorothy West
24. “Goal setting is the secret to a compelling future.”
— Tony Robbins
25. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
— Alexander Graham Bell
26. “Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
— Jim Rohn
27. “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
— Thomas Jefferson
28. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
— Paulo Coelho
29. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
— Thomas Edison
30. “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
— Tony Robbins
31. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
— Steve Jobs
32. “It’s not about better time management. It’s about better life management”
— Alexandra of The Productivity Zone
33. “Women challenge the status quo because we are never it.”
— Cindy Gallop
34. “We don’t just sit around and wait for other people. We just make, and we do.”
— Arlan Hamilton
35. “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”
— Oprah Winfrey
36. “The strongest actions for a woman is to love herself, be herself and shine amongst those who never believed she could.”
— Unknown
37. “Whenever you see a successful woman, look out for three men who are going out of their way to try to block her.”
– Yulia Tymoshenko
38. “Some women choose to follow men, and some choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.”
— Lady Gaga
39. “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ”
— Roseanne Barr
40. “No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn’t in submission to God!”
— T D Jakes
41. “A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.”
— George Meredith
42. “When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.”
— Diane Von Furstenberg
43. “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”
— Margaret Thatcher
44. “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.”
— Sheryl Sandberg
45. “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”
— Madeleine Albright
46. “Women must learn to play the game as men do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
47. “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
— Ayn Rand
48. “He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.”
— Confucius
49. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather become a man of value.”
— Albert Einstein
50. “One man with courage makes a majority.”
— Andrew Jackson
51. “One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
— Benjamin Disraeli
52. “A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.”
— Confucius Kongzi
53. “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”
— Dale Carnegie
54. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
— David Brinkley
55. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
— Epictetus
56. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
— George Lorimer
57. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
— Nelson Mandela
58. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
— Amelia Earhart
59. “You’ll find that education is just about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away.”
— John Graham
60. “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.”
— Augustine Og Mandino
61. “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.”
— Joe Girard
62. “Be a positive energy trampoline – absorb what you need and rebound more back.”
— Dave Carolan
63. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
— Zig Ziglar
64. “Work until your bank account looks like a phone number.”
— Unknown
65. “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
— Oscar Wilde
66. “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
— Winnie the Pooh
67. “Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.”
— Tom Lehrer
68. “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realise I should have been more specific.”
— Lily Tomlin
69. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
— Michael Jordan
70. “Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilisation work.”
— Vince Lombardi
71. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
— Andrew Carnegie
72. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
— Henry Ford
73. “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller
74. “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
— Patrick Lencioni
75. “I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.”
— Jean-Francois Cope
76. “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.”
— Dalai Lama
77. “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.”
— Chris Grosser
78. “Love your family, work super hard, live your passion.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk
79. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
— George Eliot
80. “Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you become your reality”
— Les Brown
81. “If you’re not positive energy, you’re negative energy.”
— Mark Cuban
82. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
— Stephen R. Covey
83. “Do the best you can. No one can do more than that.”
— John Wooden
84. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
— Walt Disney
85. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
86. “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”
— William James
87. “One of the differences between some successful and unsuccessful people is that one group is full of doers, while the other is full of wishers.”
— Edmond Mbiaka
88. “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.”
— Lucille Ball
89. “You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind. To begin, begin.”
— Gordon B. Hinckley
90. “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…”
— Marcus Aurelius
91. “Mondays are the start of the work week which offer new beginnings 52 times a year!“
— David Dweck
92. “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
— Wayne Dyer
93. “Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.”
— Germany Kent
94. “Friday sees more smiles than any other day of the workweek!”
— Kate Summers
95. “Oh! It’s Friday again. Share the love that was missing during the week. In a worthy moment of peace and bliss.”
— S. O’Sade
96. “Every Friday, I like to high-five myself for getting through another week on little more than caffeine, willpower, and inappropriate humor.”
— Nanea Hoffman
97. “Make a Friday a day to celebrate work well done that you can be proud of knowing that you just didn’t put in the time to the next paycheck.”
— Byron Pulsifer
98. “When you leave work on Friday, leave work. Don’t let technology follow you throughout your weekend (answering text messages and emails) take a break you will be more refreshed to begin the workweek if you have had a break.”
— Catherine Pulsifer
99. “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
— Zig Ziglar
100. “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”
— Pablo Picasso
101. “Don’t settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had.”
— Angela Bassett
102. “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”
— Isabel Allende
103. “Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.”
— David Ogilvy
104. “I have stood on a mountain of no’s for one yes.”
— Barbara Elaine Smith
105. “If you believe something needs to exist if it’s something you want to use yourself, don’t let anyone ever stop you from doing it.”
— Tobias Lütke
106. “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”
— Anne Lamott
107. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffet
108. “True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
— Mortimer J. Adler
109. “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
— A.A. Milne
110. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
— Martha Graham
111. “Small is not just a stepping-stone. Small is a great destination itself.”
— Jason Fried
112. “He that can have patience can have what he will.”
— Benjamin Franklin
113. “The only one who can tell you “you can’t win” is you and you don’t have to listen.”
— Jessica Ennis
114. “Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.”
— Bo Jackson
115. “Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don’t settle for them.”
— Mia Hamm
116. “Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
— Steve Jobs
117. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
— Albert Einstein
118. “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
119. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
— Mark Twain
120. “If you can’t yet do great things, do small things in a great way.”
— Napoleon Hill
121. “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”
— Jim Rohn
122. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”
— Abraham Lincoln
123. “Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
— Stephen Covey
124. “Do not wait for the perfect time and place to enter, for you are already onstage.”
— Unknown
125. “The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.”
— Epicurus
126. Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
— Mary Anne Radmacher
127. “If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.”
— Clayton M. Christensen
128. “Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. The best moment of my life was the day I realized that I no longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That’s enormously liberating and freeing, and it’s the only way to live your life and do your business”
— Cindy Gallop
129. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
130. “Worry is a misuse of imagination.”
— Unknown
131. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
— Maya Angelou
132. “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.”
— Edna Mode
133. “A year from now you will wish you had started today.”
— Unknown
134. “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
— Steve Furtick
135. “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
— Carl Sagan
136. “I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me.”
— Jay-Z
137. “I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
— Arianna Huffington
138. “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
— Erica Jong
139. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
— Henry Ford
140. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
— Confucius
141. “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
— Wayne Dyer
142. “We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.”
— Arthur Ashe
143. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
— Bill Gates
144. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been given a no. Only to find that a better, brighter, bigger yes was right around the corner.”
— Arlan Hamilton
145. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”
— Ariana Huffington
146. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
— Henry Ford
147. “You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.”
— Wayne Dyer
148. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle
149. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
— Arthur Ashe
150. “Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle”
– Ross Simmonds
151. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”
— George Addair
152. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
— Ayn Rand
153. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
— Babe Ruth
154. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
155. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.”
— Drew Houston
156. “You carry the passport to your own happiness.”
— Diane von Furstenberg
157. “Never let success get to your head and never let failure get to your heart.”
— Drake
158. “Ideation without execution is delusion.”
— Robin Sharma
159. “Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.”
— Laird Hamilton
160. “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
161. “For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”
— Vincent van Gogh
162. “If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.”
— Maria Edgeworth
163. “Resilience is when you address uncertainty with flexibility.”
— Unknown
164. “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
— Raymond Joseph Teller
165. “It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”
— Paul Bryant
166. “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”
— Henry David Thoreau
167. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
— Earl Nightingale
168. “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”
— C.S. Lewis
169. “The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born and the day you find out why.”
— Mark Twain
170. “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.”
— Pema Chodron
171. “We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.”
— Bruce Lee
172. “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”
— Octavia Butler
173. “The best way out is always through.”
— Robert Frost
174. “The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at.”
— Jesse Owens
175. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
— Frederick Douglass
176. “Someone will declare, “I am the leader!” and expect everyone to get in line and follow him or her to the gates of heaven or hell. My experience is that it doesn’t happen that way. Others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.”
— Bill Walsh
177. “Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.”
— Ruth Gordo
178. “Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short.”
— Paul Graham
179. “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
180. “If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”
—Thomas Aquinas
181. “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”
— Dita Von Teese
182. You’ll never get bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do.”
— Dr. Seuss
183. “I think it’s intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.”
— Don Cheadle
184. “You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.”
— Leymah Gbowee
185. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”
— Dolly Parton
186. “If it makes you nervous, you’re doing it right.”
— Childish Gambino
187. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
— Jane Goodall
188. “I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.”
— Louise Hay
189. “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
— Coco Chanel
190. “Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
191. “People’s passion and desire for authenticity is strong.”
— Constance Wu
192. “A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.”
— Sonia Sotomayor
193. “Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for.”
— Jennifer Lopez
194. “No one changes the world who isn’t obsessed.”
— Billie Jean King
195. “I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.”
— Mia Hamm
196. “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”
— Michael Jordan
197. “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
— Charlie Munger
198. “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”
— Tina Fey
199. “When I believe in something, I’m like a dog with a bone.”
— Melissa McCarthy
200. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
— Anaïs Nin
201. “The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.”
— David Hurley
202. “I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.”
— Gilbert K. Chesterton
203. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill
204. “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
205. “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
206. “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
— Vince Lombardi
207. “Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done right.”
— Walt Disney
208. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
— Helen Keller
209. “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however, hidden.”
— Cormac McCarthy
