Famous quotes are famous for a reason – they motivate, inspire, and teach us to live better, happier, and more successful lives. The best quotes provide us insight into life, death, love, work, success, failure, entrepreneurship, education, change, etc. and are universally accepted truths, regardless of your own experiences, hardships, and opinions.
From Einstein to Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs, and John Lennon, here are some of the most famous quotes by famous people.
Famous Quotes
1. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” –Steve Jobs
2. “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” –Charles Darwin
4. “Modern man is conditioned to expect instant gratification, but any success or triumph realized quickly, with only marginal effort, is necessarily shallow. Meaningful achievement takes time, hard work, persistence, patience, proper intent and self-awareness. The path to success is punctuated by failure, consolidation, and renewed effort.” –Mark Twight
5. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. “Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.” –Jim Rohn
7. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” –J.K. Rowling
9. “Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower
10. “Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.” –Denis Waitley
11. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” –Harriet Tubman
12. “When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.” –Abraham Lincoln
13. “Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” –Napoleon Hill
14. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” –Dale Carnegie
15. “If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.” –Walt Disney
16. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” –Nelson Mandela
17. “The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” –Peter Drucker
18. “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” –Steve Jobs
19. “Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto their leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” –Julius Caesar
20. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” –Mark Twain
21. “The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.” –A. A. Milne
22. “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” –Sir Winston Churchill
23. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” –Abraham Lincoln
24. “It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt
25. “I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.” –Edith Sitwell
26. “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” –Abba Eban
27. “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” –Oprah Winfrey
28. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” –Lao Tzu
29. “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” –Marilyn Monroe
30. “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” –Adolf Hitler
31. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” –Aristotle
32. “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” –Bruce Lee
33. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” –Steve Jobs
34. “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.” –Confucius
35. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” –William Shakespeare
36. “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” –Ayn Rand
37. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” –Confucius
38. “There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.” –Albert Guinon
39. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” –Thomas A. Edison
40. “If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” –Dhirubhai Ambani
41. “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” –Mark Caine
42. “People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” –Tony Robbins
43. “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” –Audre Lorde
44. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” –Mark Twain
45. “If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it.” –Kim Garst
46. “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” –Thomas Jefferson
47. “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? You are a child of God. 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’s not just in some of us; it’s 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
48. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” –Maya Angelou
49. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” –David Brinkley
50. “Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.” –Roger Babson
51. “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” –Vince Lombardi
52. “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” –Booker T. Washington
53. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” –Swami Vivekananda
54. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” –Steve Jobs
55. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
56. “A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” –Baltasar Gracian
57. “A word to the wise ain’t necessary, it’s the stupid ones who need advice.” –Bill Cosby
58. “I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” –Jimi Hendrix
59. “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” –Nido Qubein
60. “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” –Erica Jong
61. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” –Albert Einstein
62. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” –Sir Winston Churchill
63. “It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.” –Adolf Hitler
64. “Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.” –Mark Twain
65. “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” –Zig Ziglar
66. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” –John Lennon
67. “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.” –Steve Jobs
68. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” –Maya Angelou
69. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” –Sir Winston Churchill
70. “You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.” –Zig Ziglar
71. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’ –Muhammad Ali
72. “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” –Oprah Winfrey
73. “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” –Anne Sweeney
74. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” –Sara Blakely
75. “This life is what you make it. No matter what, you’re going to mess up sometimes, it’s a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you’re going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends – they’ll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything – they’re your true best friends. Don’t let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they’ll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them – actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can’t give up because if you give up, you’ll never find your soulmate. You’ll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don’t, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” –Marilyn Monroe
76. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” –Helen Keller
77. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” –Ayn Rand
78. “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” –Michael Jordan
79. “Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.” –Henry Van Dyke
80. “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” –Sir Winston Churchill
81. “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” –Oprah Winfrey
82. “Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” –Les Brown
83. “The best revenge is massive success.” –Frank Sinatra
84. “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” –Bruce Lee
85. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…That’s what matters to me.” –Steve Jobs
86. “I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” –Mark Twain
87. “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” –Bill Cosby
88. “Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.” –Khalil Gibran
89. “You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.” –Bob Marley
90. “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” –Groucho Marx
91. “Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies.” –Richelle Mead
92. “Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.” –Zig Ziglar
93. “When love is not madness, it is not love.” –Pedro Calderón de la Barca
94. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” –John Lennon
95. “It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.” –Richard Evans
96. “It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.” –Albert Einstein
97. “We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
98. “Obscurity and a competence – that is the life that is best worth living.” –Mark Twain
99. “If you were half as funny as you think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you are now.” –Cassandra Clare
100. “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.” –John Lennon
101. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” –Steve Jobs
102. “A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” –George Bernard Shaw
103. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” –John F. Kennedy
104. “Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
105. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” –Jimi Hendrix
106. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” –Albert Einstein
107. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” –Albert Camus
108. “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” –Albert Einstein
109. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” –Bertrand Russell
110. “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” –Lao Tzu
111. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” –Socrates
112. “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” –Gabriel García Márquez
113. “We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” –Santosh Kalwar
114. “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” –Socrates
115. “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” –John F. Kennedy
116. “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” –Plato
117. “If you place your head in a lion’s mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.” –Agatha Christie
118. “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” –Walter Cronkite
119. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” –Robert Frost
120. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” –John C. Maxwell
121. “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” –Alfred Tennyson
122. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” –J.K. Rowling
123. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” –Sir Winston Churchill
124. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost
125. “We become what we think about.” –Earl Nightingale
126. “The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” –Buddha
127. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” –Chinese Proverb
128. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” –Stephen Covey
129. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” –Jim Rohn
130. “Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” –Chinese Proverbs
131. “Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart.” –Ancient Indian Proverb
132. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” –Theodore Roosevelt
133. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” –Plato
134. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” –Henry Ford
135. “It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” –Abraham Lincoln
136. “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” –Oscar Wilde
137. “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” –Jamie Paolinetti
138. “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” –Vincent van Gogh
139. “If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.” –Abigail Van Buren
140. “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.” –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
141. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
142. “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.” –Albert Einstein
143. “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” –Beverly Sills
144. “The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.” –John Naisbitt
145. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” –Benjamin Franklin
146. “No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others.. or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.” –Calvin Coolidge
147. “Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition – in having put forth the best within you.” –Henry J. Kaiser
148. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” –C.S. Lewis
149. “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” –Vince Lombardi
150. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches.” –Napoleon Hill
