150 Best Motivational Quotes To Empower Yourself In 2024

Motivational quotes from successful people – philosophers, politicians, scientists, or entrepreneurs – can become safe anchors through hard times. Words build worlds, help us process our emotions and create new meanings for what life beholds.

So if you feel stuck on an important project, are unsure about a career decision, or are stressed about an upcoming event, you can rely on inspirational quotes to reinvent yourself. Below, you’ll find a compilation of words of wisdom that will help you decide if it’s best to act or simply – let it be!

Scroll through different categories and share your favorite quotes with your network. Let’s begin!

Motivational Quotes For Work

• “If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” – Steve Jobs
• “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison
• “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. “ – Alexander Graham Bell
• “The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic, or mental preparation -the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.” – Michael Jordan
• “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs
• “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.” – Richard Bach
• “Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou
• “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress: Working hard for something we love is called passion.” – Simon Sinek
• “Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.” – Hillary Clinton
• “There is no such thing as work-life balance. It is all life. The balance has to be within you.” – Sadhguru
• “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
• “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
• “Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.” – Patrick Suskind

Positive Quotes

• “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
• “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
• “It is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change.” – Queen Elizabeth II
• “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A.A. Milne
• “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” – Dalai Lama
• “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt
• “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” – Anne Lamott
• “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
• “Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
• “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.” – Helen Keller
• “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S Lewis
• “We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.” – Earl Nightingale
• “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don’t worry about darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest.” – Napoleon Hill

Inspirational Motivational Quotes

• “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – William Faulkner
• “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
• “We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.” – Michelle Obama
• “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy
• “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
• The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
• “Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paulo Coelho
• “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” – Amelia Earhart
• “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” – Dr. Seuss
• “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Robert Frost

Motivational Quotes For Success

• “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz
• “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” – Zig Ziglar
• “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Esteé Lauder
• “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” – Arianna Huffington
• “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” – John Wooden
• “To be successful, you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don’t isolate.” – Michael Jordan
• “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you’ll be doing when you’ve reached your goal.” – Earl Nightingale
• “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen Covey
• “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas A. Edison
• “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchill
• “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” – Ray Goforth

Motivational Quotes For Leaders

• “If you’ve created a work culture where vulnerability isn’t ok, you’ve also created a culture where innovation and creativity aren’t ok.” – Brené Brown
• “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John C. Maxwell
• “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie
• “I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.” – Jean-Francois Cope
• “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is create and manage culture.” – Edgar Schein
• “Leaders spend 5 percent of their time on the problem & 95 percent of their time on the solution. Get over it & crush it!” – Tony Robbins
• “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth
• “You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.” – Napoleon Hill
• “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” – Will Rogers
• “I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was. I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I was really the greatest.” – Muhammad Ali
• “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
• “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” – Dalai Lama
• “I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I sure can pick smart colleagues.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Best Motivational Quotes About Life

• “We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” – Albert Einstein
• “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso
• “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jim Rohn
• “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “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
• “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” – Mark Twain
• “When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.” – Oprah Winfrey
• “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” – Winston Churchill
• “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.” – Tony Robbins
• “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” – Ayn Rand
• “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” – C.S. Lewis
• “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” – Sheryl Sandberg

Motivational Quotes For Women

• “My mission in life is not merely to survive but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou
• “I think the degree of a nation’s civilization may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women.” – Helen Keller
• “Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.” – Amelia Earhart
• “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” – Marie Curie
• “I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. … We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” – Malala Yousafzai
• “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”- Oscar Wilde
• “Women are like teabags. We don’t know our true strength until we are in hot water.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
• “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• “I found that ultimately if you truly pour your heart into what you believe in – even if it makes you vulnerable – amazing things can and will happen.” – Emma Watson
• “You don’t have to play masculine to be a strong woman.” – Mary Elizabeth Winstead
• “I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.” – Audrey Hepburn
• “There’s something special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness and the nerve to never take no for an answer.” – Rihanna

Motivational Quotes For Men

• “If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “He that can have patience can have what he will.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Perhaps a man’s character is like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?” – Babe Ruth
• “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
• “To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.” – Oscar Wilde
• “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.” – Bruce Lee
• “A man may conquer a million men in battle but one who conquers himself is, indeed, the greatest of conquerors.” – Buddha
• “Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.” – George Washington
• “If you perform the sacrifice of doing your duty, you do not have to do anything else. Devoted to duty, man attains perfection.” – Bhagavad Gita

Top Motivational Quotes For Students

• “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
• “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether he’s twenty or eighty.” – Henry Ford
• “The expert in anything was once a beginner.” – Helen Hayes
• “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
• “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain
• “You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.” – Dr. Seuss
• “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Augustine Og Mandino
• “The man who does not read books has no advantage over the one who cannot read them.” – Mark Twain
• “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B. King
• “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

Monday Inspirational Quotes

• “Every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them.”- Arnold Schwarzenegger
• “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” – George Lorimer
• “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier and healthier life.” – Germany Kent
• “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
• “When you start to do the things that you truly love, it wouldn’t matter whether it’s Monday or Friday; you would be so excited to wake up each morning to work on your passions.” – Edmond Mbiaka
• “Every morning, I wake up saying, ‘I’m still alive, a miracle.’ And so I keep on pushing.” – Jim Carrey
• “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…” – Marcus Aurelius
• “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.” – Eckhart Tolle

Fitness Motivational Quotes

• “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
• “Skill is only developed by hours and hours of work.” – Usain Bolt
• “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.” – Muhammad Ali
• “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn
• “Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.” – Joseph Pilates
• “Your body can stand almost anything. It’s your mind that you have to convince.” – Andrew Murphy
• “To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” – Buddha
• “Don’t limit your challenges. Challenge your limits.” – Jerry Dunn
• “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” – Hippocrates

Inspirational Quotes From Movies

• “It is not our abilities that show what we truly are…it is our choices.” – Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it.” – Rafiki, from The Lion King
• “You spend time with your family? Good. Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” – Don Vito Corleone, The Godfather
• “Sometimes the right path is not the easiest one.” – Grandmother Willow, Pocahontas
• “If you focus on what you left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.” – Gusteau, Ratatouille
• “You’ll have bad times, but it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren’t paying attention to.” – Sean Maguire, Good Will Hunting
• “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” – Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• “You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.” – White Queen, Alice in Wonderland
• “I know what I have to do now. I’ve got to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” – Chuck Noland, Cast Away
• “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” – John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Funny Motivational Quotes

• “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” – Dalai Lama
• “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar
• “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde
• “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” – Terry Pratchett
• “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.” – Steven Wright
• “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…one step at a time.” – Joe Girard
• “I will always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” – Bill Gates

How To Motivate Yourself Through Hard Times

Resorting to an inspirational saying will likely lift your spirits for a while, but you need more to steer real intrinsic motivation. Here are some quick tips to make it happen:

1. Develop a Growth Mindset

What’s the difference between a growth and a fixed mindset in our way to meet our goals and pursue our dreams? People with a growth mindset believe that skills are malleable and that they will finally succeed with deliberate practice and perseverance.

On the other hand, those who believe that talent is fixed and that they’ve probably reached their potential already are more likely to lack motivation. Therefore, cultivating a growth mindset will enable them to bounce back quickly after adversity and become more resilient.

2. Focus on Short-term goals

Focusing solely on the outcome and long-term goals can be counterproductive when facing daily challenges. Instead, it’s best to shift your perspective from the big picture to sub-goals and concentrate on process goals to help you narrow your focus.

For example, you can’t grow your sales overnight; you need to analyze your buyer personas and design your sales funnel to prepare in advance. Moreover, stay mindful and observant to witness new opportunities that may arise instead of dwelling on obstacles.

3. Create a Supportive Network

Some motivational quotes shared earlier emphasize the importance of rapport and having brilliant people by your side to make magic happen. Befriend, hire, or follow people that challenge your limits with kindness, have something meaningful to say, and make you feel safe and honored.

Finally, create a positive working environment and avoid people with toxic vibes that undermine your possibilities, and replace them with people who make you shine bright.

Find Your Favorite Motivational Quote!

Which of the sayings above made your mind wander and your heart warm? Write it on a post-it note and pin it on your office board as a reminder. You can also create your quote and share it with your peers and friends to help them overcome adversity when things get tricky.

Are you looking for dedicated marketing quotes to inspire your team?

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