Motivational Quotes

Short Motivational Quotes

Ten words or fewer, short enough for a sticky note or a lock screen.

1. Little Strokes, Fell great Oaks.

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2. Have you somewhat to do to-morrow; do it to-day.

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3. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

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4. For they can conquer who believe they can.

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5. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

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6. Slow but steady wins the race.

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7. Kites rise against not with the wind.

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Motivational Quotes About Success

1. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

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2. I have learned that 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 while trying to succeed.

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3. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

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4. Keep your eyes on the stars, but don't forget that your feet are necessarily on the earth.

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Motivational Quotes About Not Giving Up

1. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

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2. It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance.

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3. Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.

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4. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness.

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5. If there is no struggle there is no progress.

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6. The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

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Powerful Quotes About Courage

1. If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter,' then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.

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2. Our doubts are traitors,
   And make us lose the good we oft might win
   By fearing to attempt.

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3. To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.

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4. Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty. The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.

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5. Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

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6. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

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Motivational Quotes From Women

1. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

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2. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

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3. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

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4. You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.

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5. Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

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6. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

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7. No matter what happens, keep on beginning and failing.

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Good Morning Motivation Quotes

For the start of the day, whenever yours starts.

1. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

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2. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere.

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3. Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

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4. Not knowing when the dawn will come
   I open every door;
   Or has it feathers like a bird,
   Or billows like a shore?

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5. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

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Self-Motivation Quotes About Starting Small

1. Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

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2. It is the greatest of all mistakes, to do nothing because you can only do little.

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3. For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

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4. Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is.

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5. Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.

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6. To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

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Famous Misquotes, and Who Really Said Them

These turn up on posters and in slide decks with a famous name attached. The record says otherwise.

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

  Not by Winston Churchill. The earliest version is a 1938 Budweiser beer advertisement. Churchill's name was only attached in the 1960s. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."

  Not by Henry Ford. No source from Ford himself has turned up. A Reader's Digest filler first credited him in 1947, months after his death, and the saying was already in use by 1905.

• "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

  Not by Albert Einstein. There's no evidence he said it. It first appears in 1981, in twelve-step recovery groups, and the Einstein link came years after his death.

• "Do one thing every day that scares you."

  Not by Eleanor Roosevelt. The wording comes from a Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich in June 1997. Roosevelt's real lines about fear are in the quotes from women above. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Life is a journey, not a destination."

  Not by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It isn't in his works. It's an anonymous modern saying, in circulation by 1920. His real line about finding "the journey's end in every step of the road" is above.

• "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

  Not by Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt quoted it in his 1913 autobiography and gave the credit to Squire Bill Widener of Widener's Valley, Virginia. The original says "with what you've got". Source: Quote Investigator.

• "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

  Not quite Thomas Edison's words. This wording comes from a 1982 speech by the chemist Lewis H. Sarett. Edison's recorded remark, from 1910, is "I know several thousand things that won't work." Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

  Not by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. These lines come from John Anster's very free English version of Faust, published in 1835. They're Anster's words, not Goethe's. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

  Not by Confucius. Oliver Goldsmith wrote it in The Citizen of the World (1762), a book of letters from an imaginary Chinese traveller, which is how it drifted to Confucius. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

  Not quite Albert Einstein's words. Einstein did use the image, in a 1930 letter to his son Eduard, but this neat wording is a loose version from a 2007 biography. The list above has the literal translation. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it."

  Not by Winston Churchill. The American essayist John Neal wrote "Kites rise against not with the wind" in 1846, before Churchill was born. Source: Quote Investigator.

How We Check Each Quote

We start with the original: a scan of the book, the published letter or the text of the speech. Where that isn't online, we use Quote Investigator, which traces sayings back through old newspapers and books. A quote we couldn't trace doesn't go on the list. How we pick has the full standards.

FAQs

Are these quotes real?

Yes. Each one was checked against the book, letter or speech it came from, or against Quote Investigator's research where the original is hard to reach. The link under every quote goes to the source we used.

What's a good short motivational quote?

"Little Strokes, Fell great Oaks" is five words long, from Benjamin Franklin's almanac of 1750. There are more in Short Motivational Quotes.

Why isn't my favorite quote here?

It may be one of the famous lines with the wrong name on it, so check Famous Misquotes. If it's real and missing, tell us where it comes from.

When does the quote of the day change?

At midnight where you are. Everyone on the same date sees the same quote.