101 Inspiring Quotes of All Time, Part 2

by Celes |
Self-Improvement

Posted: Jan 8, 2010
Updated:
Nov 21, 2024

This is part 2 of a 4-part series on the most inspiring quotes of all time.

Part 1: Quotes on Life, Purpose, Past/Present/Future, Dreams & Passion, Goals, Hard Work, Change, Truth & Honesty, Imagination & Creativity
Part 2: Quotes on Confidence & Personal Power, Courage & Fear, Obstacles, Failure & Success
Part 3: Quotes on Taking Action, Planning, Persistence, Time Management & Productivity, Wealth, Money & Finance, Happiness & Emotional Mastery, Love
Part 4: Quotes on Learning & Growth, Attitudes & Mindsets, Responsibility, Gratitude & Kindness, Friendship, Leadership, Helping Others, People & The World

Following the popularity of the previous article 101 Inspiring Quotes of All Time, I thought it’s time to have another quotes collation. All these quotes have been specially handpicked and have inspired me in one way or another, so I hope you will enjoy them as I have. :)

Quotes on Confidence & Personal Power

“Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.” — Unknown
“When you are totally at peace with yourself, nothing can shake you.” — Deepam Chaterjee
“If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness.” — Unknown
“Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong.” — Unknown
“Confidence is not a guarantee of success, but a pattern of thinking that will improve your likelihood of success, a tenacious search for ways to make things work.” — Dr. John Eliot from the book Overachievement
“To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.” — Unknown
“In order to be walked over, you have to be lying down.” — Celestine Chua
“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” — A.A. Milne
“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else. .” — Judy Garland
“Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.” — Thomas Edison
“Others can stop you temporarily – you are the only one who can do it permanently.” — Zig Ziglar
“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.” — J.K. Rowling
“The person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” — Chinese proverb
“Life is about choice. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you like to be.” — Celestine Chua
“Many answers to what you seek don’t lie ‘out there’. If you look inward, you’ll find the answer has been in you all along.” — Celestine Chua
“We can have more than we’ve got because we can become more than we are.” — Jim Rohn
“If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can’t, well, then you can’t.” — Celestine Chua
“Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.” — Richard Bach
“Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.” — Les Brown
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” — Albert Ellis
“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
“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Aristotle
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” — Albert Einstein
“We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime.” — Herbert Ottto

Quotes on Courage & Fear

“When you move beyond your fear, you feel free.” — Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.” — Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?
“Fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses towards growth.” — Celestine Chua
“Fear is nothing more than a mental monster you have created, a negative stream of consciousness.” — Robin Sharma, The Monk who sold his Ferrari
“If you try, you might get exactly what you want. If you don’t, you don’t.” — Unknown
“If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?.” — Les Brown
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” — Elbert Hubbard
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
“Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong.” — Unknown
“A warrior is not about perfection. Or victory. Or invulnerability. He is about absolute vulnerability. That is the only true courage.” — Peaceful Warrior
“Don’t be timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” — Helen Keller

Quotes on Obstacles, Failure & Success

“Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.” — Helen Keller
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” — David Brinkley
“You already have every characteristic necessary for success if you recognize, claim, develop and use them.” — Zig Ziglar
“The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.” — Oprah Winfrey
“History, though, shows us that the people who end up changing the world — the great political, social, scientific, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries- are always nuts, until they’re right, and then they’re geniuses.” — Dr. John Eliot
“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
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” — Sydney Smith
“There is no one giant step that does it. It’s a lot of little steps.” — Peter A. Cohen
“Problems remain as problems because people are busy defending them rather than finding solutions. Stop wasting time defending your problems and work on addressing them instead.” — Celestine Chua
“As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the ‘how’ will reveal itself.” — Tony Robbins
“Athletes visualize winning 1000s of times before they step on the track. They’ve already won. Other people just don’t know it yet.” — Unknown
“Every artist was first an amateur.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” — Elbert Hubbard
“Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen.” — Phillip Adams
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” — Dale Carnegie
“Some give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.” — Herodotus
“If you run you stand a chance of losing, but if you don’t run you’ve already lost.” — Barack Obama
“Greatest success comes just one step beyond the point at which defeat overtakes you.” — Unknown
“Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.” — Napoleon Hill
“The greatest achievement was, at first, and for a time, but a dream.” — Napoleon Hill
“No one ever is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.” — Napoleon Hill
“A Quitter never wins – and – a Winner never quits.” — Napoleon Hill
“Cultivate your desire for success to be greater than the fear of failure; Failure is merely a pit stop between where you stand and success. Failure allows you to learn the fastest; Failure inspires winners and defeats losers.” — Unknown
“Winning means being unafraid to lose.” — Fran Tarkenton
“To be successful you don’t need to do extraordinary things, you just need to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.” — Jim Rohn
“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” — Sumner Redstone Chairman
“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” — Mary Kay Ash founder
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“Success is 99% attitude and 1% aptitude.” — Celestine Chua
“It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.” — Zig Ziglar
“Success in life is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is usually the result of experience. Experience is usually the result of bad judgment.” — Anthony Robbins
“Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.” — Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture (Book)
“You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.” — Booker T. Washington
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 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 (Nike ‘Failure’ Commercial; 20 Amazing Commercials To Inspire the Greatness in You)
“In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.” — Anthony J. D’Angelo
“As soon as anyone starts telling you to be ‘realistic,’ cross that person off your invitation list.” — John Eliot
“I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” — Thomas Edison, when inventing the first commercial light bulb.
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” — Michael Jordan
“I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come.” — Michael Jordan
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” — Michael Jordan
“Men are born to succeed, not fail.” — Henry David Thoreau
“One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” — Henry Ward Beecher
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.” — Napoleon Hill
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert Francis Kennedy
“Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person we become.” — Jim Rohn
“The secret to success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching.” — Dennis Green
“But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” — Rocky Balboa
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.” — G. Woodberry
“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” — Robert Kiyosaki
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” — Theodore Rosevelt
“Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get back up.” — Deamsian Wisdom
“That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” Abraham Lincoln
“I am always doing things I can’t do. That is how I get to do them.” — Pablo Picasso
“A diamond is a piece of charcoal that handled stress exceptionally well.” — Unknown
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
“It is our experiences that mold us into who we are….during times of adversity our true character will show.” — Unknown
“You become stronger with every problem you face and every obstacle you overcome.” — Celestine Chua
“Winners don’t Quit. That’s why they Win.” — Unknown
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.” — Elbert Hubbard
“(Tool+Training+Experience) x Mindset = Goal/Success. BUT, if your mindset is zero, then the equation is (100+100+100) x 0 = Failure.” — Unknown
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt
“Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.” — Woody Allen
“The only time you run out of chances is when you stop taking them.” — Unknown
“Everyone faces challenges in life. It’s a matter of how you learn to overcome them and use them to your advantage.” — Celestine Chua
“Nothing is impossible.” — Celestine Chua
“Impossible, when spelled out, stands for ‘I’m possible’.” — Unknown
“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” — Marilyn Monroe

Inspirational Quotes Series

This is part 2 of a 4-part series on the most inspiring quotes of all time.

Part 1: Quotes on Life, Purpose, Past/Present/Future, Dreams & Passion, Goals, Hard Work, Change, Truth & Honesty, Imagination & Creativity
Part 2: Quotes on Confidence & Personal Power, Courage & Fear, Obstacles, Failure & Success
Part 3: Quotes on Taking Action, Planning, Persistence, Time Management & Productivity, Wealth, Money & Finance, Happiness & Emotional Mastery, Love
Part 4: Quotes on Learning & Growth, Attitudes & Mindsets, Responsibility, Gratitude & Kindness, Friendship, Leadership, Helping Others, People & The World

This is part of the Inspiration & Motivation series. Check out the other articles in the series:

(Images: Boy on cliff, Confidence, Wheat field, Kite flying, Mountain climb, Forks, Desert)