Sometimes, a few great, encouraging quotes and uplifting words are critical to keep or to GET us moving in trying times, to find the inner strength to push through the next item on our to-do lists.
I spent dozens of hours painstakingly weeding through thousands of options, to turn out only the most powerful, most authentic words of encouragement I could find to activate your motivation, confidence, inspiration, and self-esteem.
And as a woman of African descent in America, I tried hard to diversify the selection here, to share wisdom from beyond the typical male and European voices permeating mass media.
Recharge Your Personal Power in Under 60 Seconds
These 365 inspirational quotes from a diverse group of brilliant minds will help keep you fired up to crush it in your business, personal life, or at work, every single day of the year.
Which category do you need?
IMPACT
IMPACT
You were put here for a reason. Reconnect with your desire to change the world.[go there]
EMPOWER
EMPOWER
Entrepreneurs often go against the grain. Get empowered to stay the course.[go there]
STRENGTHEN
STRENGTHEN
Renew your strength and confidence. Shatter the grip of fear and anxiety.[go there]
MOTIVATE
MOTIVATE
Not into it today? Stick to the plan anyway. Go ahead and get ‘er done.[go there]
FOCUS
FOCUS
When it’s urgent, you’re tired, and you’re feeling like quitting, look here.[go there]
INSPIRE
INSPIRE
When it’s hard getting started or embarking on change, light your spark.[go there]
REGROUP
REGROUP
Feeling a bit frazzled, overwhelmed, or just need to stay grounded? See here.[go there]
RENEW
RENEW
Conquer discontentment, restlessness, and refresh your healthy perspective.[go there]
SUCCEED
SUCCEED
Bask in the empowering beliefs, mantras, and mottoes of the truly successful.[go there]
ENLIGHTEN
ENLIGHTEN
Get hard-hitting “real talk” from the world’s wisest sages and entrepreneurs.[go there]
IMPACT
You were put here for a reason.
Reconnect with your desire to change the world.
- “The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” —Iyanla Vanzant [Tweet ]
- “Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers… the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it.” —Wilferd Peterson
- “The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.” ―Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.” ―Marianne Williamson
- “Selfish action imprisons the world. Act selflessly, without any thought of personal profit.” ―Veda Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita [Tweet ]
- “I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.” —Jean Vanier
- “I work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego. I believe we’re all put on this planet for a purpose, and we all have a different purpose. When you connect with that love and that compassion, that’s when everything unfolds.” —Ellen DeGeneres
- “No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he GAVE.” —Calvin Coolidge [Tweet ]
EMPOWER
Entrepreneurs must often go against the grain.
Get empowered to stay the course.
- “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” —Robert Schuller [Tweet]
- “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” ―F. Scott Fitzgerald [Tweet]
- “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” ―Jane Austen [Tweet]
- “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.” ―Oprah Winfrey [Tweet]
- “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ―Rumi
- “The most courageous act is still… to think for yourself. Aloud.” ―Coco Chanel
- “If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.” ―Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.” ―Jenny O’Connell [Tweet]
- “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way. I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to. We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful. We realize that we are, as ourselves, unlimited, and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.” —Alice Walker
- “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in one drop.” —Rumi [Tweet]
- “Fortune sides with him who dares.” —Virgil [Tweet]
- “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” —George Addair
- “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” ―Rumi [Tweet]
- “Habits…the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction. You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way—by finding that it is a means of satisfaction.” —Juliene Berk
- “Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers.” ―Stephen Richards [Tweet]
- “Unless you learn to control your thoughts, you will never be able to control your actions. And if you can’t control your actions, you are walking on thin ice.” ―Bohdi Sanders
- “The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard!” —William Lloyd Garrison [Tweet]
- “I’m done with those. Regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.” ―Ned Vizzini [Tweet]
- “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.” —Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- “I never ‘dreamed’ about success; I worked for it.” —Estée Lauder [Tweet]
- “If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.” ―Jim Henson
- “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary. New, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, or the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.” ―Henry David Thoreau
- “BE an opener of doors.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
- When someone hurts you, offends you, LEARN from it. FEEL it. USE it… to teach you how to treat other people. —H.T. [Tweet ]
- “There is no failure, except in no longer trying.” ―Elbert Hubbard
- “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
- “If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.” ―Henry David Thoreau [Tweet]
- “Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” ―Thomas Jefferson
- “Warriors do not lower themselves to the standards of other people; they live independently according to their own standards and code of honor.” ―Bohdi Sanders
- “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.” —James Lane Allen [Tweet]
- “Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. If you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.” ―Ben Carson
- “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” —Charles Swindoll
- “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” —Eleanor Roosevelt [Tweet]
- “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” ―Frederick Douglass [Tweet]
STRENGTHEN
Renew strength and confidence.
Shatter the grip of fear and anxiety.
- “Faith doesn’t mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.” —Orson Scott Card
- “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” —William Shakespeare [Tweet ]
- “To have what you have never had, you have to do what you have never done.” ―Roy Bennett [Tweet ]
- “It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson [Tweet ]
- “When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything.” ―Stephen Richards
- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ―Frank Herbert
- “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” ―Ambrose Redmoon [Tweet ]
- “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” ―Paulo Coelho
- “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ―Marie Curie [Tweet ]
- “There’s no shame in fear, my father told me. What matters is how we face it.” ―George R.R. Martin
- “Find out what you’re afraid of, and go live there.” ―Chuck Palahniuk [Tweet ]
- “When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover I’ve been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” —Bernice Johnson Reagon
- “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” —Nelson Mandela
- “And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk more.” —Erica Jong [Tweet ]
- “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” —Rosa Parks
- “Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it?” —Caroline Myss [Tweet ]
- “When the ax came into the forest, the trees said, ‘The handle is one of us.’” ―Alice Walker
- “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson [Tweet ]
- “Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift.” ―Dante Alighieri [Tweet ]
- “Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You’ve taught me that bravery is being terrified and doing it anyway.” ―Laurell K. Hamilton
- “Courage is taking action… no matter what. So you’re afraid? Be afraid. Be scared silly, to the point you’re trembling and nauseous—but do it anyway.” ―Richelle E. Goodrich
- “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on—it is going on when you don’t have strength.” ―Napoléon Bonaparte [Tweet ]
- “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.” —Alice Walker
- “He who fears he shall suffer … already suffers what he fears.” ―Michel de Montaigne [Tweet ]
IGNITE YOUR CONFIDENCE & MOTIVATION:
Which category do you need?
IMPACT
IMPACT
You were put here for a reason. Reconnect with your desire to change the world.[go there]
EMPOWER
EMPOWER
Entrepreneurs often go against the grain. Get empowered to stay the course.[go there]
STRENGTHEN
STRENGTHEN
Renew your strength and confidence. Shatter the grip of fear and anxiety.[go there]
MOTIVATE
MOTIVATE
Not into it today? Stick to the plan anyway. Go ahead and get ‘er done.[go there]
FOCUS
FOCUS
When it’s urgent, you’re tired, and you’re feeling like quitting, look here.[go there]
INSPIRE
INSPIRE
When it’s hard getting started or embarking on change, light your spark.[go there]
REGROUP
REGROUP
Feeling a bit frazzled, overwhelmed, or just need to stay grounded? See here.[go there]
RENEW
RENEW
Conquer discontentment, restlessness, and refresh your healthy perspective.[go there]
SUCCEED
SUCCEED
Bask in the empowering beliefs, mantras, and mottoes of the truly successful.[go there]
ENLIGHTEN
ENLIGHTEN
Get hard-hitting “real talk” from the world’s wisest sages and entrepreneurs.[go there]