83 Quotes to Inspire and Make You Think

Good quotes inspire and make us think and reflect. Here we’ve collected eighty-three inspirational and thought-provoking quotations for you to read and contemplate. They include choice words of wisdom from such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr., William Shakespeare, and Winston Churchill, among many others.

1. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. -Thomas Edison
2. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. -Benjamin Franklin
3. Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. -Mahatma Gandhi
4. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well. -Virginia Wolff
5. We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
6. To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. -Winston Churchill
7. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. -Oscar Wilde
8. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -Confucius
9. The secret in education lies in respecting the student. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You’ll be criticized anyway. -Eleanor Roosevelt
11. Advertising is legalized lying. -H.G. Wells
12. All that live must die, passing through nature to eternity. -William Shakespeare
13. He who opens a school door closes a prison. -Victor Hugo
14. A loving heart is the truest wisdom. -Charles Dickens
15. A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be. -Abraham Lincoln
16. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry Brooks Adams
17. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. -Confucius
18. A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. -Mahatma Gandhi
19. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. -Mahatma Gandhi
20. I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
21. The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them. -Mark Twain
22. An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. -Mahatma Gandhi
23. One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing. -Socrates
24. Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself. -William Shakespeare
25. Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. -Benjamin Franklin
26. Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. -Napoleon Hill
27. Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
28. When you’re finished changing, you’re finished. -Benjamin Franklin
29. Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
30. I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. -Socrates
31. The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper. -Thomas Jefferson
32. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. -Albert Einstein
33. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -Abraham Lincoln
34. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. -Henry David Thoreau
35. Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say. -Wayne Dyer
36. The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. -Cicero
37. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. -Oscar Wilde
38. If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my ax. -Abraham Lincoln
39. Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once. -William Shakespeare
40. The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end. -Benjamin Disraeli
41. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -Edmund Burke
42. If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
43. Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought. -Napoleon Hill
44. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. -Mark Twain
45. I am not a teacher, but an awakener. -Robert Frost
46. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. -Confucius
47. Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death. -Seneca
48. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. -Franklin D. Roosevelt
49. Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. -John Lennon
50. The best way to make children good is to make them happy. -Oscar Wilde
51. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. -Abraham Lincoln
52. An unexamined life is not worth living. -Socrates
53. Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living. -Albert Einstein
54. Initiative is doing the right thing without being told. -Victor Hugo
55. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. -John F. Kennedy
56. The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. -Henry David Thoreau
57. We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. -Thomas Fuller
58. Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. -Robert Frost
59. Happiness depends upon ourselves. -Aristotle
60. He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. -Napoleon
61. The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. -Wayne Dyer
62. If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it. -Winston Churchill
63. Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak. -John Donne
64. Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other’s little failings. -Jean de la Bruyère
65. You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again. -Benjamin Franklin
66. A child miseducated is a child lost. -John F. Kennedy
67. Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence. -Vincent Van Gogh
68. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. -Mark Twain
69. Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. -Woodrow Wilson
70. Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. -George Orwell
71. Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities. -Napoleon Hill
72. No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
73. It is never too late to be what you might have been. -George Eliot
74. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein
75. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them. -George Eliot
76. Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
77. Those who live are those who fight. -Victor Hugo
78. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -Voltaire
79. There is no love sincerer than the love of food. -George Bernard Shaw
80. Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. -Oscar Wilde
81. The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. -Oscar Wilde
82. If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company. -Jean-Paul Sartre
83. A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich. -William Shakespeare