inspirational quotes

Inspirational quotes and motivational sayings have an amazing ability to change the way we feel about life. This is why I find them so interesting and crucial on our paths to success.

So what’s their secret?

You see, the way you think and feel about yourself, including your beliefs and expectations about what is possible for you, determines everything that happens to you.

When you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life, sometimes instantly. Just as positive words can make someone smile or a well-timed humorous quote can make someone laugh, our thoughts react to the world in real-time.

You have complete control over only one thing in the universe — your thinking – and that’s where motivational quotes come in!

Words have the power to motivate us and help us to live more intentionally. Each of us have areas of our lives that we would like to improve, and there are quotes and words of wisdom that can almost always be found to motivate and inspire us in these different areas. As we strive to grow and improve ourselves, it's important to choose the words we speak to ourselves carefully. I've listed below some words that represent possible areas in which individuals may hope to grow and have included quotes that might help motivate and inspire personal change in each area.

1. Accomplish

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."

—Muhammad Ali

“You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.”

—Abraham Lincoln

“Here I am . . . wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end—that there is such a thing as death.”

—Leo Tolstoy

2. Action

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

—Thomas Jefferson

“The path to success is to take massive, determined actions.”

—Tony Robbins

3. Ambition

"Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."

—Bill Bradley

“Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose.”

—Frank Tyger

“A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.”

—Marcus Aurelius

4. Believe

"Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution."

—David Joseph Schwartz

“Be brave to stand for what you believe in even if you stand alone.”

—Roy T. Bennett

"Believing in yourself is not for you; it's for every person who has touched your life in a significant way and for every person your life will touch the same way five minutes from now, or five centuries from now."

—Jaye Miller

5. Clarity

"Clarity precedes success."

—Robin Sharma

“A lack of clarity could put the brakes on any journey to success.”

—Steve Maraboli

“Clarity affords focus.”

—Thomas Leonard

6. Challenge

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.”

—Bette Davis

“I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot.”

—Nadia Comaneci

7. Commitment

"Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there."

—Haile Gebrselassie

“Commitment is an act, not a word.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre

“Commitment is what transforms a promise into a reality.”

—Abraham Lincoln

8. Confidence

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

—Helen Keller

"Self-confidence is the memory of success."

—David Storey

“Without self-confidence, we are as babes in the cradle.”

—Virginia Woolf

9. Courage

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

—Winston Churchill

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”

—Maya Angelou

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”

—Mark Twain

10. Dare

"Failures are made only by those who fail to dare, not by those who dare to fail."

—Lester B. Pearson

"Far better is it 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 grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

—Theodore Roosevelt

"Dare to dream, but even more importantly, dare to put action behind your dreams."

—Josh Hinds