Values of the Wise is not your typical site, like BrainyQuote or AZQuotes, which list thousands of quotes willy-nilly because their computers scour the web to find inspirational quotes. By the same token, the quote search engine on this site has much more focus on values, wisdom, ethics, character, and personal growth. These motivational quotes exist where psychology meets philosophy meets personal growth. And over the last 25 years, I have carefully collected a very diverse array of them – 30,000 as of this writing.
With that kind of carefully-compiled database of quotations about values, wisdom, virtue, character, and self-growth, it is easy to pull together lists of quotes (and I make it just as easy for you to do the same!). This blog features fifty nifty motivational, inspirational quotes. They will help you to re-focus, appreciate your life, see things from a more philosophical perspective, and be a better person. One of the best motivational quotes through the centuries has been Gandhi‘s, Be the change you wish to see in the world, but I now present you with fifty additional inspirational quotes:
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~ Epictetus
“You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.” ~ Dale Carnegie
“Even if you’re on the right track, you get run over if you just sit there.” ~ Will Rogers
“The only way on Earth to multiply happiness is to divide it.” ~ Paul Scherer
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank
“Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.” ~ Stan Smith
“Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.” ~ Joe Clark
“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.” ~ Alfred Tennyson
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.” ~ Helen Keller
“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” ~ Arthur Ashe
“The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.” ~ Dennis Waitley
“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” ~ Mark Twain
“Happiness is not something ready-made; it comes from your own actions.” ~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” ~ Mae Jemison
“The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” ~ William James
“He who fears to suffer already suffer from his fear.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not making decisions.” ~ Catherine Cook
“I found the secret of the ocean meditating on a dewdrop.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“Life is a hard battle anyway, and if we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier.” ~ Sojourner Truth
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” ~ Plutarch
“A smile is your greatest social asset.” ~ Zig Ziglar
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” ~ Will Rogers
“Laughter is an instant vacation.” ~ Milton Berle
“Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a person in the course of their life.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“The golden rule of conduct therefore, is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never think alike and we shall see the Truth in fragments and from different angles of vision.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.” – Francis Bacon
“The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.” ~ Parke Godwin
“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” ~ Jesus of Nazareth
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“This is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.” ~ Willa Cather
“If you want to change the world, start with the next person who comes to you instead.” ~ Unknown
“The character and quality of your life depend on what you are able to learn as you live.” ~ Alan Nordstrom
“You should tell the truth, but all truths don’t need to be told.” ~ Katarina of Sweden
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.” ~ Ingrid Bergman
“There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.” ~ Albert Einstein
“You shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.” ~ Maya Angelou
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” ~ Epictetus
“We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” ~ Helen Keller
“Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.” ~ Gail Sheehy
“Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” ~ Lao-Tzu
“You don’t have to wear a patch on your arm to have honor.” ~ Aaron Sorkin
“Never before have we had so many tools to learn and to communicate. Yet the art of talking, listening, and ascertaining the truth seems more elusive than ever….” ~ Maureen Dowd
“Recognize yourselves in he or she who are not like you or me.” ~ Carlos Fuentes
“You are part of society and other people are part of society… other’s self-fulfillment is the other side of the same coin.” ~ Tal Ben-Shahar
“Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.” ~ Pearl Bailey
“It’s really hard to hate someone for being different when you’re too busy laughing together.” ~ George Takei
I welcome you to create your own list of inspirational quotes for work, school, personal growth, or some other instrumental or intrinsic reason. There is a 30,000-quote search engine that you can use for free. It’s really incredible, and you can spend hours inspiring yourself or engaging in lifelong learning. It’s called The Wisdom Archive, and it is available advertisement-free HERE. My compliments.
