Top 100 Motivational and Inspirational Quotes of All Time!

Here is a list of the top 100 motivational quotes to get you inspired for life.

They include 100 quotes from Michael Jordan, Aristotle, Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Henry Ford, Isaac Singer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc. and I’d say the are in a pretty good order of 1-100:

1. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
– Aristotle

2. The best way out is always through.
– Robert Frost

3. Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
– William B. Sprague

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

5. Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
– Henry Ford

6. I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
– Oprah Winfrey

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. You must be the change you want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi

9. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
– Goethe

10. You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
– Zig Ziglar

11. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
– Mahatma Gandhi

12. Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
– Napoleon Hill

13. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
– Truman Capote

14. Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare.
– Japanese Proverb

15. In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.
– Theodore Roosevelt

16. If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet.
– Isaac B. Singer

17. Success consists of doing the common things of life uncommonly well.
– Unknown

18. Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
– Charles F. Kettering, Engineer and Inventor

19. 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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
– Mark Twain

20. Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.
– Unknown

21. Some succeed because they are destined. Some succeed because they are determined.
– Unknown

22. Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
– Dan Stanford

23. Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.
– Albert Einstein

24. A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
– Hugh Downs

25. If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.
– Marie Osmond

26. Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
– Roy Goodman

27. If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
– E. Joseph Cossman

28. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

30. The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
– Mark Twain

31. Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
– Mark Twain

32. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
– Mark Twain

33. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
– Mark Twain

34. The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
– Richard B. Sheridan

35. Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

36. “Act or accept.”
– Anonymous

37. Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless.
– Tim Blixseth

38. The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
– Bono

39. Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.
– Dr Phil

40. Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
– Stephen R. Covey

41. People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
– Norman Vincent Peale

42. Whenever you find whole world against you just turn around and lead the world.
– Anonymous

43. Being defeated is only a temporary condition; giving up is what makes it permanent.
– Marilyn vos Savant, Author and Advice Columnist

44. I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened by old ones.
– John Cage

45. Fall down seven times, get up eight.
- Japanese Proverb

46. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
– Unknown

47. The best way to predict the future is to create it.
– Unknown

48. Anyone can do something when they WANT to do it. Really successful people do things when they don’t want to do it.
– Dr. Phil

49. There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
– Dr. Denis Waitley

50. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
– Sir Winston Churchill

51. Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but don’t quit.
– Conrad Hilton

52. Attitudes are contagious. Make yours worth catching.
– Unknown

53. Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
– John Wooden

54. There are only two rules for being successful. One, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.
– Mario Cuomo

55. Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
– Richard Bach

56. Vision doesn’t usually come as a lightening bolt. Rather it comes as a slow crystallization of life challenges that we one day recognize as a beautiful diamond with great value to ourselves and others.
– Dr. Michael Norwood

57. Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
– Dr. Joyce Brothers

58. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
– Samuel Beckett

59. Flops are a part of life’s menu and I’ve never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.
– Rosalind Russell

60. Cause Change & Lead
Accept Change & Survive
Resist Change & Die

– Ray Norda, Chairman, Novell

61. Winners lose much more often than losers. So if you keep losing but you’re still trying, keep it up! You’re right on track.
– Matthew Keith Groves

62. An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
– Bill Bernbach

63. An obstacle is often a stepping stone.
– Prescott

64. Life is “trying things to see if they work”
Ray Bradbury

65. If you worry about yesterday’s failures, then today’s successes will be few.
Anonymous

66. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
Dennis P. Kimbro

67. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

68. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

69. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson

70. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein

71. Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
Machiavelli.

72. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi

73. “You are what you think about all day long.” — Dr. Robert Schuller

74. What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say” — Ralph Waldo Emerson”

75. Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington

76. “Talent is formed in solitude, character in the bustle of the world.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

77. To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
– Elbert Hubbard

78. If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.
– J.M. Power

79. By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day
– Robert Frost

80. I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
– Maya Angelou

81. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
– William James

82. When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?
– Sydney Harris

83. Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was. 
– Richard L. Evans

84. In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.
– Robert Frost

85. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

86. Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
– Seneca

87. Do first things first, and second things not at all.
– Peter Drucker.

88. The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders.
– Foster’s Law

89. Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.
– Joe Clark

90. I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
– Winston Churchill

91. Positive anything is better than negative thinking.
- Elbert Hubbard

92. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

93. Those who wish to sing, always find a song.
- Swedish Proverb

94. If you’re going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

95. The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

96. Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
- Voltaire

97. Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
– Friedrich Nietzsche,  The Gay Science, 1882

98. There is no education like adversity.
– Disraeli

99. He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

100. Adversity introduces a man to himself.
– Author Unknown

Reader contributions:

101. The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
– W. Somerset Maugham

102. Have the passion, take the action & magic will happen.
– Bar Rafaeli

103. If you’ve got it. use it. If you don’t got it, then get it!
– Reader submitted

104. Son, if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to redo it?
– Reader’s grandfather said this, and I LOVE IT

105. Faith held solely is the begining of action.
– Reader submitted

106. Positivity is all about overlooking the negative fact.
– Reader submitted

107. Life is all about up and doing.
– Reader submitted

108. You will never get lessons on swimming from a drowning man!
– Reader submitted

109. Life is not about ALL the wrong moves you made, Life is about the one right move that made ALL the difference.
– James Lockhart

110. Be humble enough to admit you’re not perfect, but determined enough to strive to be perfect.
– Babsie Burke (reader)

111. If you can’t sleep do not count the sheep, worship the Shepherd.
– Babsie Burke (reader)

112. Life is a journey, its not a race. Walk through it.
– Reader submitted

113. Everything happens for a reason, you only need to keep on editing your attitude and gratitude so as to sail through.
– Reader submitted

114. The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.
– Reader submitted (I really like this one, thanks Sandiso)

115. Love cannot be etched on paper for paper can be shredded, love cannot be etched on stone for stone can be broken, but love can be etched on the soul for the soul never dies.