Motivation quotes
2.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside motivation — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"To be financially wealthy you must have a purpose for your life. In other words, without purpose, you'll never know when you have enough money, and you can never be financially wealthy."
"Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses."
"I don't think I ever expected anything like an Oscar ever, to tell you the truth. That is not my motivation when I do these roles. I really am motivated by being able to work with great people and create a body of work that I can look back and be proud of."
"I'm always afraid of failing. It's great motivation to work harder."
"I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom."
"[We need] to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and the tremendous untapped potential in our prisons."
"Motion Before Motivation: It means you get started FIRST, then FEEL the Inspiration to keep going."
"I think the reality of prison is you don't get anything unless you want it in there. Whatever happens to you in prison, this is what you asked for. Nothing happens to you if you don't give that vibe."
"I can quit boxing now and practically go into any kind of business and I'll be successful just as well as I was in boxing."
"Everyone says "I wish I was in your shoes...", the hundreds of people that wish they were in my shoes don't know the tenth of it. If they were in my shoes they would cry like a baby."
"One of my friends once saw another guy's (criminal) record and said, 'Look, this guy is a born troublemaker, just a loser.' I had to tell him, 'No, that's my record - and it doesn't include my juvenile history.'"
"It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register."
"Engaging in social business is beneficial to a company because it leverages on business competencies to address social issues, involves one-time investment with sustainable results, and produces other positive effects such as employee motivation and improved organizational culture."
"There is a true feminist movement in Buddhism that relates to the goddess Tārā. Following her cultivation of bodhicitta, the bodhisattva's motivation, she looked upon the situation of those striving towards full awakening and she felt that there were too few people who attained Buddhahood as women. So she vowed, 'I have developed bodhicitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman.'"
"Do not measure your life by your goals but what you are doing to achieve them."
"Forget your environmental footprint. Think about your ethical footprint. What good is it to build a zero-carbon, energy efficient complex, when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best?"
"If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species."
"I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?"
"Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future."
"I'm doing the 2015 5x50 challenge because ... t’s the most awesome incentive for your daily motivation!"
