I have taken the liberty to BOLD the ones I agree with completely. – Michael Bradley
Kevin Kruse
Contributor
I write about wholehearted leadership and employee engagement.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
100 Best Quotes On Leadership
Kevin Kruse
Contributor
LEADERSHIP 5/28/2013
Top 100 Inspirational Quotes
Inspirational quotes and motivational quotes have the power to get us through a bad week, and can even give us the courage to pursue our life’s dreams. In my book, 4 Keys to Happiness and Fulfillment at Work, I share surprising research into the true triggers of workplace motivation. So in the spirit of self motivation, here are 100 inspirational quotes.
ForbesQuotes: Thoughts On The Business Of Life
1. Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. –Kevin Kruse
2. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
3. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
4. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost
5. I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale
6. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
7. 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
8. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart
9. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
10. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
11. We must balance conspicuous consumption with conscious capitalism. –Kevin Kruse
12. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
13. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
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.Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll
16. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
17. The mind is everything. What you think you become. –Buddha
18. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
19. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
20. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
21. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
22. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
23. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
24. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
25. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
The Forbes eBook Of Motivational Quotes
Discover the timeless advice that the world’s great thinkers, billionaires, writers and businesspeople have to offer.
26. 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
27. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
28. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
29. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
30. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
31. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
32. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
33. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin
34. 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
35. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
36. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus
37. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
38. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
39. 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
40. 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
41. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
42. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
43. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
44. 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
45. Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides
46. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
47. 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
48. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb
49. 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
50. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius
51. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
52. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
53. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou
54. Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
55. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg
56. 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
57. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
58. You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
59. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie
60. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
61. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
62. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington
63. 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
64. Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
65. You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong
66. 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
67. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
68. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby
69. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
70. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
71. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach
72. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
73. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey
74. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
75. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
76. 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
77. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
78. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
79. 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
80. Education costs money. But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
81. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks
82. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
83. 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
84. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
85. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
86. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
87. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
88. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
89. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins
90. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
91. 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
92. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
93. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
94. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
95. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
96. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
97. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
98. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
99. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
100. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
101. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs
102. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 