Motivational Quotes

Live Your Full Potential

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be … your playing small does not serve the world.” ~ Marianne Williamson

“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.” ~ Orison Marden

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” ~ William Shakespeare

“Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.” ~ Zig Ziglar

“You can become and accomplish anything in life! Your successes, greatness, and potential are determined by you alone; and all of the characteristics necessary to achieve your goals and dreams already lie within you. Our success and potential is not determined by talent or ability, knowledge or money, race or gender, or even circumstance or setting – it is created, developed, and determined from within ourselves.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.” ~ Marilyn Ferguson

“The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” ~ Ben Herbster

“There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.” ~ Henry Ford

“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” ~ Liane Cordes

“There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.” ~ Orison Swett Marsden

“All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do…. Build, therefore, your own world.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one’s maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.” ~ Buck Rodgers

“Our potential in life is not determined by uncontrollable circumstances and settings, racial or gender characteristics, economic conditions or access to knowledge, or even social connections or family heritage. We must never fall victim to the fallacy that success is a result of the schools we graduated from, jobs held, awards won, degrees earned, wealth acquired, or any credential or certificate obtained. Success and potential are created, developed, and determined within ourselves.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

Desire Success & Completely Commit

“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.” ~ Mario Andretti

“There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” ~ Ken Blanchard

“Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth – that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.” ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“Where the determination is, the way can be found.” ~ George S. Clason

“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” ~ Eddie Robinson

“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” ~ Napolean Hill

“If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking.” ~ Lou Holtz

“Sometimes success is due less to ability than zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.” ~ Charles Buxton

“When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve” ~ Napolean Hill

Think Big & Control Thoughts

“The only limitations in life are the ones we create, believe, and nourish within our own minds.” ~ Matthew Toone

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.” ~ Henry Ford

“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” ~ William James

“Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.” ~ Richard Bach

“A man is literally what he thinks.” ~ James Allen

“There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negative thinking definitely attracts negative results. Conversely, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, his positive thinking sets in motion creative forces and success.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.” ~ Carl Sandburg

“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” ~ Ralph Charell

“Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” ~ Joyce Brothers

“When you have control over your thoughts, you have control over your life.” ~ Unknown

“You have to think big to be big.” ~ Claude M. Bristol

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.” ~ Buddha

“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” ~ James Allen

“Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” ~ Author Unknown

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” ~ William Ernest Henley

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” ~ Proverbs 23:7

Believe Dreams Are Possible – Believe in Yourself

“The number one problem that keeps people from winning … is lack of belief in themselves.” ~ Arthur L. Williams

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“People everywhere are far more scared of actually accomplishing their dreams than they are of failing to achieve them. Being average, good, or mediocre is certainly easier and less-risky than the work necessary to be great and successful in anything! Despite our potential, ideas, goals and dreams – we allow our fears and doubts to become traitors and the result is always inaction and regret.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.” ~ Bruce Barton

“You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” ~ Napoleon Hill

“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable.” ~ Denis Watley

“In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” ~ Michael Korda

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

“Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe.” ~ Mark Victor Hansen

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” ~ Anatole France

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” ~ Gail Devers

Overcome Fear & Doubt

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” ~ William Shakespeare

“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the ’someday I’ll’ philosophy.” ~ Denis Waitley

“People everywhere have great ideas, reachable dreams, and unlimited potential, but they spend too much time listening to the voices of fear and doubt that they never take action, and thus success is never accomplished and potential is never realized.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are the words of fools.” ~ Og Mandino

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” ~ Dale Carnegie

“Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.” ~ Arthur Ashe

“My procrastination which has held me back was born of fear … now I know that to conquer fear I must always act without hesitation and the flutters in my heart will vanish. Now I know that action reduces the lion of terror.… I will walk where the failure fears to walk.” ~ Og Mandino

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ~ Nelson Mandela

“Fear is unnecessary worry. Fear is a lack of self-confidence. Fear is evidence of an inability to control one’s thoughts. Fear is often the underlying reason for failure. Fear limits one’s potential because the thought of fear results in inaction. Fear, ironically, is both necessary and a protection; but unfortunately, people use fear’s protection as a sad justification and excuse for an inability to take a risk. Fear is in everyone. And thankfully, fear is controllable and can be overcome.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

“What a fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.” ~ John Bunyan

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~ Dale Carnegie

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” ~ Les Brown

Have Goals & A Plan

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” ~ Michelangelo

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” ~ Stephen A. Brennan

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” ~ Fitzhugh Dodson

“You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures.” ~ Charles C. Noble

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” ~ Sydney Smith

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emereson

“Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.” ~ Les Brown

“Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Take Risks

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” ~ Robert Frost

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

“Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.” ~ Robert Allen

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” ~ Mark Twain

“Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” ~ Frederick Wilcox

“Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great.” ~ Jimmy Johnson

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” ~ Robert F. Kennedy

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~ Helen Keller

“If you wait until all the lights are ‘green’ before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.” ~ Zig Ziglar

“Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.” ~ Ray Bradbury

“The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.” ~ Goethe

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” ~ William Shakespeare

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.” ~ Andre Malraux

“You must lose a fly to catch a trout” ~ George Herbert

Act Now & Work Hard

“My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. All are of no value unless they are followed by action. I will act now.” ~ Og Mandino

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.” ~ John Ruskin

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” ~ Vidal Sassoon

“What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” ~ Stephen King

“The ascent of Everest was not the work of one day … it is, in fact, a tale of sustained and tenacious endeavor … over a long period of time.” ~ Sir John Hunt

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.” ~ Michelangelo

“None of us can change our yesterdays, but all of us can change our tomorrows.” ~ Colin Powell

“I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half heartedly because I know if I do, then I can expect half hearted results.” ~ Michael Jordan

“You can’t hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. You can’t catch a fish unless you put your line in the water. You can’t reach your goals if you don’t try.” ~ Kathy Seligman

“When the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it may be that they take better care of it there.” ~ Cecil Selig

Persist & Learn From Failure

“The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.” ~ Og Mandino

“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.” ~ B.C. Forbes

“For whatever reason, in the moment of failure, we often wrongfully assume that we personally are failures, and we thus quit. Failure is not a person; it is an event that is absolutely necessary to achieve success. Failures are detours, not dead-end streets. And when such discouraging streets come, as they inevitably will, we should view them as roadblocks that cause others to quit and us to try harder.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.” ~ William E. Gladstone

“Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ~ Calvin Coolidge

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” ~ Robert Collier

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” ~ Thomas Edison

“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it.” ~ Mary Kay Ash

“I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered into this world into defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepperd. I am lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny. I will persist until I succeed.” ~ Og Mandino

“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” ~ Barack Obama

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” ~ Japanese Proverb

Don’t Ever Quit

“Never give up on your dream …. Perseverance is all important. If you don’t have the desire and the belief in yourself to keep trying after you’ve been told you should quit, you’ll never make it.” ~ Tawni O’Dell

“The majority of personal successes in life are usually accomplished after the individual determines to not give up when they experience a failure.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“‘No’ is a word on your path to ‘Yes.’ Don’t give up too soon. Not even if well-meaning parents, relatives, friends, and colleagues tell you to get ‘a real job.’ Your dreams are your real job.” ~ Joyce Spizer

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.” ~ Ross Perot

“People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.” ~ George Herbert Allen

“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” ~ Conrad Hilton

“Whenever you make a mistake or get knocked down by life, don’t look back at it too long. Mistakes are life’s way of teaching you. Your capacity for occasional blunders is inseparable from your capacity to reach your goals. No one wins them all, and your failures, when they happen, are just part of your growth. Shake off your blunders. How will you know your limits without an occasional failure? Never quit. Your turn will come.” ~ Og Mandino

“Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.” ~ Napolean Hill

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~ Thomas Edison

Give & You Will Receive

“You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” ~ Zig Ziglar

“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” ~ Luke 12:48

“I absolutely believe in the power of tithing and giving back. My own experience about all the blessings I’ve had in my life is that the more I give away, the more that comes back. That is the way life works, and that is the way energy works.” ~ Ken Blanchard

“For it is in giving that we receive.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi

“We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” ~ Winston Churchill

“Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having sown.” ~ Napoleon Hill

“Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.” ~ Jim Rohn

“The greatest good we can do for others is not just to share our riches with them, but to reveal theirs.” ~ Zig Ziglar

Real Success in Life: God, Family, & Developing Character

“Your success in life is not determined by the education obtained, institutions attended, career accomplishments, awards won, or the wealth you acquire. Real success in life is solely determined on who you become, the character and attributes you develop, the people you help, and whether or not at the end of the day you were true to the most important priorities in life – namely: God & Family.” ~ Matthew V. Toone

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be.” ~ Harry Lloyd

“I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.” ~ Zig Ziglar

“A gold medal is a nice thing – but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.” ~ From Cool Runnings

“Success is not so much what we have as it is what we are.” ~ Jim Rohn

“As you climb the ladder of success, check occasionally to make sure it is leaning against the right wall.” ~ Anonymous

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” ~ Zig Ziglar

“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.” ~ Erma Bombeck

“Dealing with the disappointment of certain failures is far easier than dealing with the disappointment that accompanies some successes because they were not the right successes.” ~ Matthew V. Toone