29 of the All-Time Best Motivational Quotes

I believe most people know the right thing to do. The problem is, they tend to move so fast through life, and get so caught up in their emotions of the moment, that they often forget to do it.

That is why I believe in motivational quotes. I have them taped up by my mirror. By my computer screen. On my refrigerator. By the telephone. They’re scribbled all over the front, back and insides of the folders containing notes for my books, speeches, articles and essays.

I try to locate my favorite motivational quotes anywhere my eyes may travel, especially anywhere my eyes may travel where the potential for stress, temptation, anger and other negative emotions is high.

Yes, I have even considered taping certain motivational quotes to the shirts of certain people I correspond with who, if and when I let them, tend to trigger challenging emotions. I’m not sure they’d appreciate that, though.

But motivational quotes are powerful triggers that remind us of what really matters, and what doesn’t. Of what is right, and what isn’t.

How many aggressive arguments between spouses, parents and children, and other loved ones could be avoided if the visual aid of G.K. Chesterton’s quote below was there to remind them of what really matters?

Could ego battles at work and school, and even ego battles between nations, be reduced if a quote like John F. Kennedy’s below hung above everyone’s computer monitor, or was embossed in their desk or the like?

It may sound simple, but often the most profound answers are the simplest. And even if it helps us practice tolerance, and remember love, and enables us to persevere, and reminds us to really live versus merely exist just a little, locating motivational quotes where our eyes and hearts are likely to see them seems quite worth it.

With that in mind, here are twenty-nine I believe you will appreciate. Please pass this page on to others, and feel free to tape these anywhere you see fit:

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
- G.K. Chesterton, author


My life is my message.
- Mahatma Gandhi


Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
- Winston Churchill

Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging.
- Marcus Aurelius

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy


If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
- Lucy Larcom, poet

If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them.
- Anonymous

The question should be, is it worth trying to do, not can it be done.
- Allard Lowenstein, American diplomat

The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.
- Blood of the Martyr

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
- Seneca

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as looking for the experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell, author of the classic The Power of Myth (one of the most influential books in my life)

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher

What is to give light must endure burning.
- Victor Frankl, Auschwitz survivor and author of the must-read classic, Man's Search for Meaning

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
- Anne Frank

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
- William M. Thackeray, novelist

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
- Indian philosopher-poet Shantideva

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
- Albert Einstein

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living.
- Walter Rauschbusch, theologian

Success doesn't come to you…you go to it.
- Marva Collins, educator

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
- Martin Luther King

I believe that having something new happen, no matter how small, is what makes for a healthy day, no matter how many days may be left.
- David Greenberger, from his essay As I Grow Old, included in the exceptional essay collection, This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women

The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.
- Joe Ancis, comedian

Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant, columnist and very smart person

I am always doing that which I cannot in order that I may learn how to do it.
- Pablo Picasso

The secret of happiness is curiosity.
- Norman Douglas, author

You were born an original. Don't die a copy.
- John Mason, author

And not exactly a quote but a beautiful excerpt that is right in line with the philosophy of Intense Experiences and quite worth sharing:

“My passion for tango disguises a fearfulness. I fear the shrinking of life that goes with aging. I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not taking chances. I fear the dying that goes on inside you when you leave the game of life to wait in the final checkout line.

“I seek the sharp, scary pleasure that comes from beginning something new — that calls on all my resources and challenges my mind, my body and my spirit, all at once.

“My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.

“So, when people say, ‘Tango? At your age? Have lost your mind?’ I answer, ‘No, and I don't intend to.’”

- Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarden, from an essay, Dancing All the Dances as Long as I Can, included in the exceptional essay collection, This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women

ALSO BE SURE TO SEE:

25 All-Time Top Motivational Quotes

34 Favorite Motivational Quotes Submitted by IntenseExperiences.com Readers