Clarice Lispector
Novelist, Short Story Writer
"Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born."
Saying Yes quotes
Saying Yes
62 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Brené Brown
Researcher, author, speaker
"One of the most painfully inauthentic ways we show up in our lives sometimes is saying "yes" when we mean "no," and saying "no" when we mean "hell yes.""
Paulo Coelho
Writer
"When you say 'yes' to others, make sure you are not saying 'no' to yourself."
Paulo Coelho
Writer
"Saying ‘No’ does not always show a lack of generosity and that saying ‘Yes’ is not always a virtue"
Seth Godin
Author, Entrepreneur
"Just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside saying yes — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Saying Yes quotes (page 1 of 4)
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"A dishonest yes is a no to yourself."
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"Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in a state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is."
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11 likes
"Madness is never that far away. It's as close as saying yes to the wrong impulse."
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10 likes
"Saying no to something is actually much more powerful than saying yes."
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"We're focused on providing innovations in software, driving the continuous improvement for a much better experience, and there's a lot going on here that speaks to this decade and what's going to happen in this decade. We can kind of sum it up in terms of saying, "Yes, you can.""
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8 likes
"I've never really done anything to create what has happened. It creates itself. I'm here because it happened. But I didn't do anything to make it happen apart from saying 'Yes'"
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"This is an attraction based Universe. You cannot say no. You are always saying, 'Yes please, yes please, yes please,' with your attention."
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7 likes
"Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no."
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"Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding."
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"I was saying yes because when you're in love, the world is full of possibilities, and when you're in love, you want to take every single one of them."
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"When you're not confident as a young woman in saying "no" or even saying "yes" necessarily, you don't know which one you're more afraid of in some way. That happens a lot."
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