57 Inspirational Quotes & Motivational Sayings About Life

When life is difficult and you are having a tough time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, reading inspirational quotes can be a very powerful way to inspire and motivate yourself.

The reality is whatever problem or difficulty you are currently going through, probability states that somewhere, sometime in history another human also went through something similar. So learning and reading inspirational quotes from someone who went through life’s difficulties and has been there and back, gives you access to wisdom which you would have only otherwise gotten with a lot of age and personal experience. Meaning by reading these inspirational quotes you can sort of skip a step and learn from your “future self”, from someone who faced your difficulty, turned around and passed what they learned back to you. It’s quite poetic really, almost feels like a “circle of life” sort of thing, where humans in the past give us a lifetime worth of wisdom in a small condensed version in a few lines, a few words, a small quote 🙂

But I think you got the point, I really LOVE quotes and can speak hours and hours about how they have made my life better. In difficult moments of my life when I felt really hopeless, by reading quotes and particularly some of the inspirational quotes below, I was able to recharge, get motivated and light the spark inside of me to get going again.

So whether you are looking for motivation to start a project, hope to keep going on when life is coming down on you the hardest, or for finding some light in the darkness when all your doors seem to be closing. I am confident this list of inspirational quotes that I’ve handpicked will help to inspire and motivate you to reach your dreams!

Here are 57 of my favorite inspirational quotes for you to read, remember and retell:

1. The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Abraham Lincoln
2. I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas Edison
3. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs… one step at a time. – Joe Girard
5. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self-evident. – Arthur Schopenhauer
7. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein
8. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.  – Howard Ruff
9. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right. – Albert Einstein
10. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs
11. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. -Winston Churchill
12. When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. – Alexander Graham Bell
13. One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests. – John Stuart Mill
14. What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now. – Buddha
15. No dreamer is ever too small; no dream is ever too big. – Anonymous
16. Life is only a reflection of your thoughts. If you can think it you can do it. – Osman Abraham
17. Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. – Jim Rohm
18. Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you. – J. Gitomer
19. If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. – Thomas A. Edison
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21. Failure Will Never Overtake Me If My Determination To Succeed Is Strong Enough. – Og Mandino
22. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. – Napoleon Hill
23. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. – Chinese Proverb
24. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. – Stephen Covey
25. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. – Dennis P. Kimbro
26. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
27. We Generate Fears While We Sit. We Overcome Them By Action. – Dr. Henry Link
28. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain
29. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
30. Whether You Think You Can Or Think You Can’t, You’re Right. – Henry Ford
31. What You Lack In Talent Can Be Made Up With Desire, Hustle And Giving 110% All The Time. – Don Zimmer
32. Live each day as if your life had just begun. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
33. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. – Carl Bard
34. Words can inspire, thoughts can provoke, but only action truly brings you closer to your dreams. – Brad Sugars
35. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. – Arthur C. Clarke
36. You Are Never Too Old To Set Another Goal Or To Dream A New Dream. – C.S. Lewis
37. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
38. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – Theodore Roosevelt
39. Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison
40. If you want something out of life you have to go out there and get it, because it is not just going to be given to you. – Kelvin Waites
41. Loving ourselves allows us to show up in the world so we can love others, uplift others, and make the world a more loving place. – Troy L Love
42. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. – Babe Ruth
43. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. – Martin Luther King Jr.
44. For Every Reason It’s Not Possible, There Are Hundreds Of People Who Have Faced The Same Circumstances And Succeeded. – Jack Canfield
45. 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
46. One Of The Lessons That I Grew Up With Was To Always Stay True To Yourself And Never Let What Somebody Else Says Distract You From Your Goals. – Michelle Obama
47. A Clear Vision, Backed By Definite Plans, Gives You A Tremendous Feeling Of Confidence And Personal Power. – Brian Tracy
48. 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
49. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. – Maya Angelou
50. Embrace the present moment fully and with passion, because only through the present moment do we truly live. – Richard L. Haight
51. There Are No Limits To What You Can Accomplish, Except The Limits You Place On Your Own Thinking. – Brian Tracy
52. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
53. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
54. We become what we think about. – Earl Nightingale
55. If not us, who? If not now, when? – John F. Kennedy
56. Everyone has the potential to live a fulfilling life. The difference lies in how we look at things. – Vishal Pandey
57. The mind is everything. What you think you become. – Buddha