The 100 Most Famous Quotes of All Time

The insight and experience of successful leaders and entrepreneurs are valuable sources of inspiration and motivation. 

Many of these experts condense their experience and wisdom into short quotes that are meaningful and inspirational. Discover 100 of them in this post.

1. "Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." -Mother Teresa

2. "When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." -Franklin D. Roosevelt

3. "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else." -Margaret Mead

4. "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." -Robert Louis Stevenson

5. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

6. "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -Benjamin Franklin

7. "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart." -Helen Keller

8. "It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." -Aristotle

9. "Whoever is happy will make others happy too." -Anne Frank

10. "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. "If life were predictable it would cease to be life and be without flavor." -Eleanor Roosevelt

12. "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." -Abraham Lincoln

13. "Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

14. "You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated." -Maya Angelou

15. "Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game." -Babe Ruth

16. "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." -Oscar Wilde

17. "The only impossible journey is the one you never begin." -Tony Robbins

18. "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." -Mother Teresa

19. "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile." -Albert Einstein

20. "The purpose of our lives is to be happy." -Dalai Lama

21. "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

22. "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." -Mae West

23. "Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

24. "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." -Henry David Thoreau

25. "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -Nelson Mandela

26. "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." -Confucius

27. "May you live all the days of your life." -Jonathan Swift

28. "Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale." -Hans Christian Andersen

29. "Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life." -John Wooden

30. "Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved." -D. H. Lawrence

31. "Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about." -Marilyn Monroe

32. "Life is a long lesson in humility." -James M. Barrie

33. "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -Robert Frost

34. "Love the life you live. Live the life you love." -Bob Marley

35. "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." -Helen Keller

36. "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." -Dr. Seuss

37. "Life is made of ever so many partings welded together." -Charles Dickens

38. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking." -Steve Jobs

39. "Life is trying things to see if they work." -Ray Bradbury

40. "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." -Thomas A. Edison

41. "The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well." -John D. Rockefeller Jr.

42. "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -Thomas Jefferson

43. "Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston S. Churchill

44. "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." -Walt Disney

45. "Don't be distracted by criticism. Remember — the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you." -Zig Ziglar

46. "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." -Henry David Thoreau

47. "I never dreamed about success, I worked for it." -Estee Lauder

48. "Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don't quit." -Conrad Hilton

49. "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." -Colin Powell

50. "The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere." -Barack Obama

51. "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." -Franklin D. Roosevelt

52. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." -Herman Melville

53. "Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better." -Jim Rohn

54. "The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same." -Colin R. Davis

55. "I failed my way to success." -Thomas Edison

56. "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." -James Cameron

57. "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." -Steve Jobs

58. "A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." -David Brinkley

59. "Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out." -John Wooden

60. "Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value." -Albert Einstein

61. "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." -John D. Rockefeller

62. "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing." -Abraham Lincoln

63. "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

64. "You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it." -Oprah Winfrey

65. "If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work." -Thomas J. Watson

66. "If you genuinely want something, don't wait for it — teach yourself to be impatient." -Gurbaksh Chahal

67. "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." -Vidal Sassoon

68. "If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." -Jim Rohn

69. "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." -Alexander Graham Bell

70. "People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy." -Tony Robbins

71. "Believe you can and you're halfway there." -Theodore Roosevelt

72. "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

73. "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou

74. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." -Ayn Rand

75. "Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is." -Vince Lombardi

76. "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." -Henry Ford

77. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." -Wayne Gretzky

78. "I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples." -Mother Teresa

79. "You become what you believe." -Oprah Winfrey

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

81. "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." -Anne Frank

82. "An unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates

83. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear." -George Addair

84. "Dream big and dare to fail." -Norman Vaughan

85. "You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." -Beverly Sills

86. "Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it." -Charles Swindoll

87. "Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, ‘I'm possible!'" -Audrey Hepburn

88. "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." -Confucius

89. "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." -Henry Ford

90. "Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears." -Les Brown

91. "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear." -Rosa Parks

92. "I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." -Benjamin Franklin

93. "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on." -Sheryl Sandberg

94. "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse." -Florence Nightingale

95. "I would rather die of passion than of boredom." -Vincent van Gogh

96. "If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough." -Oprah Winfrey

97. "Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning." -Gloria Steinem

98. "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." -Napoleon Hill

99. "First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end." -Aristotle

100. "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 safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover." -Mark Twain

Find Inspiration From the World's Strongest Leaders

Whether you're pursuing success as an entrepreneur, in sales, or in everyday life, the experiences and lessons of others are valuable resources. Those who keep learning and growing often find success. Where will your next success lie?

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.