As a kid, if you’d asked me one of my life goals, it was to have a quote. I’ve always loved collecting them—scrolling through short, memorable bits that resonate and serve a purpose.
I’d love for this collection to make an impact on you the way it has on me. I hope you find something here to add to your own list.
JUMP TO: [🧱 Mindset] • [🦉 Wisdom] • [💼 Business] • [💰 Wealth] • [🎨 Creativity] • [😂 Humor]
🧱 Mindset & Resilience
“Stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life.”
— C. S. Lewis
“It’s no miracle. We just decided to go.”
— Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Apollo 13
“I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.”
— Ray Charles
“Fear is like fire. It can cook for you. It can heat your house. Or it can burn you down.”
— Cus D’Amato
“Pain is guaranteed, suffering is optional.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.”
“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.”
— William Jennings Bryan
“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength, but through persistence.”
— Buddha
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
— Thomas Edison
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
— John Wooden
“If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”
— Tom Hanks (A League of Their Own)
“The more I practice, the luckier I get.”
— Gary Player
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
— Cormac McCarthy
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
— Robert F. Kennedy
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
“I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough.”
— Albert Einstein
“Above all, try something.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
— Helen Keller
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.”
— English Proverb
“Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.”
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”
— Marcus Lattimore
“Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime.”
— Bruce Lee
“Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.”
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
— Dolly Parton
“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
— Les Brown
“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
— Jimmy Dean
“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
— T.S. Eliot
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
— Muhammad Ali
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men… Impossible is nothing.”
— Muhammad Ali
🦉 Wisdom & Philosophy
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
— Miles Kington
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
— Thomas Sowell
“It ain’t the things we don’t know that get us in trouble, It’s the things we know that ain’t so.”
— Artemus Ward
“Das letzte Hemd hat keine Taschen. The last shirt has no pockets.”
— German Proverb
“The game of life is a game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win.”
To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said “If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole earth.”
— Anthony de Mello
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, And the life of the candle will not be shortened.”
— Buddha
“Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
— Shakespeare (Macbeth)
“If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old.”
— Michael Pollan
“Pursue what’s in your heart, and the universe will conspire to support you.”
“The universe gives us the ones we need. And the ones we deserve.”
— Flea
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
— Bertrand Russell
“Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.”
— Mark Twain
“The frog in a well knows nothing of the mighty ocean.”
— Japanese Proverb
“What’s ‘easy to do’ is easy not to do.”
— Jim Rohn
“Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove.”
— Robert Anton Wilson
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
— Confucius
“Everything I’m not, made me everything I am.”
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
— Dale Carnegie
“What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle
“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”
— John A. Shedd
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
— Louis Pasteur
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”
— Edward Abbey
“Action expresses priorities.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“One who makes no mistakes makes nothing.”
— Giacomo Casanova
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
— Mae West
“The first rule is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“There are a thousand cures but no antidotes.”
— James Altucher
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
— Steve Jobs
“There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.”
— French Proverb
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
— Heraclitus
“Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”
— Oscar Wilde
“The two most important days of our life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
— Mark Twain
“Better to remain silent & be thought a fool than to speak & remove all doubt.”
— English Proverb
“Today is the only day, yesterday is gone.”
— John Wooden
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
— Will Rogers
“Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.”
— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
— Charles Darwin
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
— Dr. Seuss
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“The two prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.”
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do… Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”
— Dalai Lama
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain
“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
— Henry David Thoreau
“You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”
— Timothy Leary
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
— Buddha
“What we have done for ourselves dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
— Albert Pike
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
— Frederick Douglass
“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.”
— Anonymous
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
— Lao Tzu
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
— Mark Twain
💼 Business & Leadership
“Trust is one of the most powerful economic forces in earth.”
— Charlie Munger
“If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.”
— Chinese Proverb
“Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.”
— Doc Rivers
“The best option is the option that gives you the most options.”
“Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.”
— Bernard Arnault
“In many cases, the marginal price is set by the dumbest person in the business. That’s why it’s so hard.”
— Peter Keefe
“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
— John Wooden
“Success is that place in the road where preparation and opportunity meet.”
— Branch Rickey
“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”
— John D. Rockefeller
“Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the ‘me’ for the ‘we.’”
— Phil Jackson
“Success is to be measured not by wealth, power, or fame, but by the ratio between what a man is and what he might be.”
— H.G. Wells
“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.”
— Charles Schwab
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
— Henry Ford
“Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.”
— Babe Ruth
“When you’re good at something, you’ll tell everyone. When you’re great at something–they’ll tell you.”
— Walter Payton
“Hire smart, or manage tough.”
— Red Scott
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
— Albert Einstein
“A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.”
— Charles F. Kettering
“It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.”
“Vision without execution is hallucination.”
— Bill Walton
“How you do anything is how you will do everything.”
— John Wooden
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
— Farrah Gray
“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”
— Bob Dylan
“In the absence of a story, people will write their own.”
— Jon Acuff
“Reduce the scope, stick to the schedule.”
— James Clear
“Good stories always beat good spreadsheets.”
— Chris Sacca
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood… but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”
— Pat Riley
“The easiest way to lose success is to become convinced that you are successful.”
— Herb Kelleher
“Long ago, kings would hire people to read sheep guts. There’s always been a market for people who pretend to know the future.”
— Charlie Munger
“If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.”
— Anonymous
💰 Wealth & Investing
“I can calculate the movements of the stars, but not the madness of men.”
— Isaac Newton
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett
“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.”
— Warren Buffett
“If they don’t scare you out, they will wear you out.” (On stocks)
— Peter Lynch
“Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.”
— Charlie Munger
“Above all else, focus on acquiring knowledge…Knowledge [is] like gold—a currency you will transform into something more valuable than you can imagine.”
— Robert Greene
“Smart men go broke in three ways, liquor, ladies, and leverage.”
— Charlie Munger
“Hello. It’s my broker. What? Then buy, buy, buy! Oh, everyone’s buying? Then sell, sell, sell!”
— Al Czervik (Caddyshack)
“Being right too early is often indistinguishable from being wrong.”
— Howard Marks
“In the short term, the stock market is a voting machine. In the long term, it’s a weighing machine.”
— Benjamin Graham
“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
— Warren Buffett
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.”
— Niccolo Machiavelli
🎨 Creativity & Ideas
“Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.”
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
— Dr. César A. Cruz
“Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas and moves among them like a lion-tamer.”
— G.K. Chesterton
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”
— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
— Bruce Lee
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
— Charles Mingus
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
— Dalai Lama
“One should use common words to say uncommon things.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer
😂 Humor & Wit
“You don’t need to pee on an electric fence to learn not to do it.”
— Charlie Munger
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
— Bertrand Russell
“Never wrestle with a pig because if you do you’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.”
— Charlie Munger
“You want out of the hole? First you gotta put down the shovel.”
— Rick Dicker (The Incredibles)
“If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”
— Ms. Lohr
“Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time.”
— Tommy Callahan (Tommy Boy)
“You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.”
— Dorothy Parker
“Jugglers and Singers Require Applause, You Are a Lannister.”
— Tywin Lannister (Game of Thrones)
