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Random quotes that inspire me

Below is a list of some of my favorite quotes. If you have one I should add, share it.

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
— Donald H. Rumsfeld

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
— Victor Hugo

The truth is more important than the facts.
— Frank Lloyd Wright

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
— Bernard Baruch

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work that goes on. It adds up.
— Barbara Kingsolver, author

Only the educated are free.
— Epictetus

It takes a great man to be a good listener.
— Calvin Coolidge

Never give in and never give up.
— Hubert H. Humphrey

A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.
— Jim Bishop

There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.
— Christopher Morley

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
— Cyril Connolly

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
— William Feather

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.
— Bill Watterson

Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond to it.
— Lou Holtz

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
— Winston Churchill

Most of us miss out on life's big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tonys. Emmys. But we're all eligible for life's small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer. Don't fret about copping life's grand awards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us.
— United Technologies Corporation slogan

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
— Laurence J. Peter

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
— H. Jackson Brown

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
— William James

Give a man a job he loves and he will never work a day in his life.
— Confucius

Get to work: You aren't being paid to believe in the power of your dreams.
— Unknown

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
— Gil Bailie

Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you good. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
— Ronald Osborn

Work hard for eight hours a day, and eventually you may become a boss and be able to work twelve.
— Unknown

All life is an experiment.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
— Maya Angelou

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
— Walt Disney

There is more to be seen than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done.
— Lion King's "Circle of Life"

Ten people who speak make more noise than 10,000 who are silent.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

Knowledge is power.
— Francis Bacon

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
— Will Rogers

Courage is grace under pressure.
— Ernest Hemingway

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.
— John F. Kennedy

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word — excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
— Pearl Buck

Strive for excellence, not perfection.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
— Albert Einstein

Success is not in what you have, but who you are.
— Bo Bennett

My life is my message.
— Mohandas Gandhi

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
— Voltaire

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
— Voltaire

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes — the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.
— Apple Computer ad, 1997

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
— Mohandas Gandhi

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
— John W. Gardner

No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'
— Paul Tsongas

The beginning is always today.
— Mary Wollstonecraft

The less you know, the more you believe.
— Bono

Ability is a poor man's wealth.
— John Wooden

If I wasn't doing this, I have no idea what I'd be doing.
— Nicholas Sparks

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
— Paul Valery

You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.
— Will Rogers

You can never plan the future by the past.
— Edmund Burke

Man is what he believes.
— Anton Chekhov

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
— Leo Rosten

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
— Bobby Knight

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.
— Hugh Macleod

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
— Carol Burnett

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
— Henry David Thoreau

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
— David Sedaris

Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.
— Mark Twain

It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell.
— Wilbur F. Storey, Chicago Times editor

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
— Lyndon B. Johnson

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
— Arthur Miller

The secret of a successful newspaper is to take one story each day and bang the hell out of it. Give the public what it wants to have and part of what it ought to have whether it wants it or not.
— Herbert Bayard Swope

News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.

The power is to set the agenda. What we print and what we don't print matter a lot.
— Katharine Graham

A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.
— Jimmy Breslin

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
— Pearl S. Buck

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
— Lao Tzu

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
— Hubert H. Humphrey

Fate loves the fearless.
— James Russell Lowell

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
— Jon Kabat Zinn

Bad things don't happen to writers; it's all material.
— Garrison Keillor

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
— Peter Drucker

I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life — and that is why I succeed.
— Michael Jordan

Never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite, and never outstay your welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.
— From “The Beach”

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, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are 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

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.
— Unknown

If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned'
— Epictetus

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
— Dr. Seuss

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
— Winston Churchill

Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.
— Unknown

You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.
— Rosalynn Carter

The most dangerous thing to do is stand still.
— William Burroughs

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
— Herman Melville

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
— Plutarch

Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
— Earl Mac Rauch

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
— Sophia Loren

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous."
— Henry Ford

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
— Dr. Seuss

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
— Frank Herbert

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
— Sarah Ban Breathnach

Always dream and shoot higher than you know how to. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
— William Faulkner

Here’s some simple advice: Always be yourself. Never take yourself too seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs and members of parliament.
— Kermit the frog

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I dwell in possibility.
— Emily Dickinson

If you don’t believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man’s way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there.
— Michael Korda

The question isn’t, ‘Where are you going?’ It’s, ‘What are you doing here in the first place?’
— Art Buchwald

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
— Helen Keller

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
— Howard Aiken

No matter how good you get you can always get better and that's the exciting part.
— Tiger Woods

The most beautiful experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.
— Albert Einstein

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
— John Andrew Holmes

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
— George Eliot

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
— Albert Schweitzer

Success, real success, in any endeavor demands more from an individual than most people are willing to offer—not more than they are capable of offering.
— James Roche

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
— Marian Wright Edelman

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.
— Wayne Gretzky

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
— Theodore Roosevelt

We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
— Margaret Mead

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.
— Turkish proverb

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.
— Amelia Earhart

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
— Louis L’Amour

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one’s life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
— Hannah Senesh

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
— Josh Billings

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
— Anatole France

We are the choices we have made.
— Meryl Streep

All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you’re not good enough or strong enough or talented enough. They will say you’re the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no’s become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES.
— Nike Ad

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
— Albert Einstein

The purpose of life is to matter — to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that we lived at all.
— Leo Rosten

There is a better way to do it; find it.
— Thomas Edison

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
— Mohandas Gandhi

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
— Eric Hoffer

The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.
— Norman Vincent Peale

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
— Isaac Newton

Newspaper stories are fleeting things. The thing that makes this business so remarkable, that every day we get a new canvas to paint on, is also what makes it so unsatisfying. The story, almost always, dies with the day, the pages of the day-old paper turning yellow in the sun.
— Rick Bragg

If you want to achieve great things in your life, you have to take risks. The first risk is daring to feel deeply, to be passionate about what you want and care about. Enthusiasm is the key to breaking through barriers, whether your dream is to touch one person or millions.
— Ken Kragen

We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
— Joseph Epstein

Newspapering is 10,000 doors opened. It is election night, with two decisive precincts missing; it is the circus in town, the visiting speaker, the legislative hearing, the city budget, the building of a highway, a new stock issue, a commencement address. It is a governor speaking wearily of some program killed. It is a world of frauds and honest men, and always a deadline coming up.
— James Kilpatrick

I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.
— Henry Luce

It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop.
— Confucius

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
— Aldous Huxley

I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
— E. B. White

The disgrace is not in failing at something you dream about and want to do. The disgrace is not having the courage to try in the first place.
— Edward Rendell

Wherever you are, be there.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

Leaders are dealers in hope.
— Napoleon

If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.
— John A. Wheeler

You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
— Mary Tyler Moore

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.
— Will Rogers

Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.
— Archimedes

No amount of travel on the wrong road will bring you to the right destination.
— Ben Gaye III

If you ask me what I have come to do in this world...I will reply: I'm here to live my life out loud.
— Emile Zola

Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
— Meister Eckhart

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
— Og Mandino

The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.
— Marquise du Deffand

Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be.
— Marsha Petrie Sue

With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.
— Peter Robert Fleming

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome.
— William James

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.
— Albert Camus

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.
— Theodore Roosevelt

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.
— George Burns

Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision.
— Muhammad Ali

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
— Mikhail Baryshnikov

Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back.
— Babe Ruth

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.
— Twyla Tharp

To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.
— Chester Bamaro

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
— John Wooden

Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.
— Henry Anatole Grunwald

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 go right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart, so that better things can fall together.
— Marylin Monroe