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This is a list of random motivation quotes that have profoundly influenced human thought and action. For older advice in the same spirit, see the Stoics’ lessons in self-mastery, Eastern wisdom from Lao Tzu to Confucius, Benjamin Franklin’s life lessons, and famous lines about the past.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
—Viktor E. Frankl
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
—Zig Ziglar
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
—Chinese Proverb
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
—Pablo Picasso
“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
—Harrington Emerson
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
—Napoleon Hill
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
—Helen Keller
“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.”
—Samuel Lover
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”
—Benjamin Disraeli
“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
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
—Jim Rohn
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn’t, I would die.”
—Isaac Asimov
“Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.”
—Miguel de Unamuno
