Inspirational Quotes
A variety of perspectives

Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.

E.B. White

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

Rollo May
Psychologist and author

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be: it's their mistake, not my failing.

Richard Feynman
Nobel-prize winning physicist

Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be.

Tom Paine

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Soren Kierkegaard

If we give ourselves to the average and not the exceptional, we never fully become what we could or what we intended for ourselves.

Ross Heaven,
The Sin Eater's Last Confessions: Lost Traditions of Celtic Shamanism

I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.

Lucille Ball

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Dorothy Parker

Self-judgment is perhaps the greatest source of inner suffering and discontent. More than that - or because of that - it is one of the major barriers to change, growth, expansion, and transformation. In particular, it keeps you from simply resting in yourself from moment to moment.

Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame

It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.

Randy Pausch

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; what you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius and power and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.

Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille (American dancers and choreographers)

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Cecil Beaton

Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.

William Newton

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

Henry Miller

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

"There is no use trying," said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

Winston Churchill

Not everything is going to be a masterpiece, but you get out there and try and sometimes it really happens. The other times, you're just stretching your soul.

Maya Angelou

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, that chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elemental truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no person could have dreamed would come one's way.

W.H. Murray

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; they are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

Randy Pausch

Inspirational Quotes A variety of perspectives

Inspirational Quotes
A variety of perspectives