30 Best Motivational Sayings

We all need motivation at different times in our lives. Sometimes, we need to be inspired to go after our career goals, or to seize the day and live life to the fullest. At other times, we need motivation to overcome our fears and do the thing we know is right. And sometimes, we need motivation to simply carry on and maintain hope during trying times.

Use this collection of motivational sayings from wise teachers to help you find the inspiration you need to throw off the excuses and negative thinking and start living your best life.

Motivation for Career Success

Career Success

Thomas Edison:

Many of life’s failures are people who had not realized how close they were to success when they gave up.

Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Thomas Jefferson:

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Katherine Whitehorn:

Katherine Whitehorn

Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.

Lauren Amarante:

You could have a million ideas, but they’re all worthless if you don’t get them done.

George Eliot:

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

For more motivational quotes regarding work

Motivation to Overcome Fear

Motivation to Overcome Fear

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person: “Always do what you are afraid to do”.

Eleanor Roosevelt:

Eleanor Roosevelt

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.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca:

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Lao Tzu:

There is no illusion greater than fear.

Gail Sheehy:

Gail Sheehy

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Motivation to Keep the Faith

Keep the Faith

Albert Einstein:

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Norman Vincent Peale:

Norman Vincent Peale

No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Paul Harvey:

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

Winston Churchill:

Winston Churchill

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Leo Tolstoy:

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

Motivation to Seize the Day

Seize-the-Day

Jonathan Swift:

May you live all the days of your life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Every second is of infinite value

Every second is of infinite value.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

T. S. Eliot:

Every moment is a fresh beginning

Every moment is a fresh beginning.

Samuel Johnson:

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Ruth Ann Schabacker:

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.

Motivation to Do the Right Thing

Do the Right Thing

George Washington Carver:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

Abraham Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln

I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.

Anne Frank:

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Dalai Lama:

My true religion is Kindness

My true religion is Kindness.

Mother Teresa:

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.