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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"What is easy and obvious is never valued; and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to knowledge of it without difficulty, and without and stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded."
"I have known men who could see through the motivations of others with the skill of a clairvoyant; only to prove blind to their own mistakes. I have been one of those men."
"I want to admit that I am an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can be solved."
"Facts, like people, want to be free - and when they're free, liberty is usually around the corner."
"The simple act of writing down a goal and making a written plan for its accomplishment moves you to the top 3 percent."
"A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness."
"Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life."
"If we get total certainty, we get … bored out of our minds. So, God, in Her infinite wisdom, gave us a second human need, which is uncertainty. We need variety. We need surprise."
"Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love."
"Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow."
"The only long-term motivation is self motivation. So hire people who are self motivated and get out of their way."
"Motivations are too tangled and complex."
"Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?"
"Motivation is the spark that lights the fire of knowledge and fuels the engine of accomplishment, it maximizes and maintains momentum"
"All of us perform better and more willingly when we know why we're doing what we have been told or asked to do."
"Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to others."
"Self-esteem and identity are very fragile things. I think a lot of times, those are the motivations for why people do take their own lives - not being seen, not being recognized, not being loved, not feeling supported, not feeling understood."
"You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once."
"A different result requires doing something different."
"Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism playing out silently in the lives of people all around us."
