Motivational quotes have been a staple in the world of self-improvement for centuries. From ancient philosophers to modern-day leaders, some of the greatest minds in history have left us with powerful words of wisdom that continue to inspire and motivate us to be our best selves. These quotes range from simple phrases that encourage us to persevere in the face of adversity, to complex philosophies that challenge us to think deeply about our values and beliefs. Regardless of their origin, all of these quotes have one thing in common: they offer us the inspiration and guidance we need to pursue our goals and live fulfilling life.
You can also find other motivational articles and quotes such as powerful narrations for courage, life-changing poems for hard times, and ups and downs quotes in life.
Greatest Motivational Quotes From History
Quotes by Marcus Aurelius
1. “When someone wrongs you, ask yourself: What made him do it? Once you understand his concept of good and evil, you’ll feel sorry for him and cease to either be amazed or angry. If his concept is similar to yours, then you will be bound to forgive him since you would have acted as he did in similar circumstances. But if you do not share his ideas of good and evil, then you should find it even easier to overlook the wrongs of someone who is confused and in a moral muddle”.” ― Marcus Aurelius
2. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius
3. “All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.” ― Marcus Aurelius
4. “Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.” ― Marcus Aurelius
5. “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero
6. “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” ― Marcus Aurelius
7. “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive-to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ― Marcus Aurelius
8. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” ― Marcus Aurelius
9. “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.” ― Marcus Aurelius
10. “Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” ― Seneca
Quotes by Chanakya
11. “Dharma is law in its widest sense—spiritual, moral, ethical, and temporal. Every individual, whether the ruler or the ruled, is governed by his or her own dharma. To the extent that society respected dharma, society protected itself; to the extent, society offended it, society undermined” ― Chanakya
12. “There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.” ― Chanakya
13. “A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.” ― Chanakya
14. “The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.” ― Chanakya
15. “That man who is without religion and mercy should be rejected. A guru without spiritual knowledge should be rejected. The wife with an offensive face should be given up and so should relatives who are without affection.” ― Chanakya
16. “Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.” ― Chanakya
17. “As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?” ― Chanakya
18. “A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.” ― Chanakya
19. “We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment” ― Chanakya
20. “A man is born alone and dies alone, and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone, and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.” ― Chanakya
21. “Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.” ― Chanakya
22. “The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.” ― Chanakya
23. “The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. But stratagems devised by wise men can kill even babes in the womb.” ― Chanakya
Quotes by Epictetus
24. “You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero’s shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, ‘Appear by all means.’ And when Florus inquired, ‘But why do not you appear?’ he answered, ‘Because I do not even consider the question.’ For the man who has once stooped to consider such questions, and to reckon up the value of external things, is not far from forgetting what manner of man he is.” ― Epictetus
25. “The first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as “Do not lie.” Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs, by asking, for example, “How does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is a logical inference, what is a contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?” Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one that should occupy most of our time, is the first. But we do just the opposite. We are preoccupied with the third field and give that all our attention, passing the first by altogether. The result is that we lie – but have no difficulty proving why we shouldn’t.” ― Epictetus
26. “For I am not everlasting, but a human being, a part of the whole as an hour is a part of the day. Like an hour I must come, and like an hour pass away.” ― Epictetus
27. “Remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Don’t stop it. Is it not yet come? Don’t stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Do this with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy partner of the feasts of the gods. And if you don’t even take the things which are set before you, but are able even to reject them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of the gods, but also of their empire.” ― Epictetus
28. “Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don’t talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation. And when persons came to him and desired to be recommended by him to philosophers, he took and recommended them, so well did he bear being overlooked. So that if ever any talk should happen among the unlearned concerning philosophic theorems, be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you may be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don’t throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them after they have been digested.” ― Epictetus
29. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” ― Epictetus
30. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ― Epictetus
31. “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” ― Epictetus
32. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.” ― Epictetus
33. “If you want your children and wife and friends to live forever, you’re a fool, because you’re wanting things that aren’t within your power to be within your power, and the things that aren’t your own to be your own.” ― Epictetus
34. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.” ― Epictetus
35. “Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.” ― Epictetus
Quotes by Seneca
36. “Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.” ― Seneca
37. “Philosophy is not an occupation of a popular nature, nor is it pursued for the sake of self-advertisement. Its concern is not with words, but with facts. It is not carried on with the object of passing the day in an entertaining sort of way and taking the boredom out of leisure. It moulds and builds the personality, orders one’s life, regulates one’s conduct, shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone, sits at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in perilous seas. Without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy.” ― Seneca
38. “For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast – a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” ― Seneca
39. “My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of a happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live.” ― Seneca
40. “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is a content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ― Seneca
41. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” ― Seneca
42. “If you admit to having derived great pleasures, your duty is not to complain about what has been taken away but to be thankful for what you have been given…” ― Seneca
43. “We should try by all means to be as grateful as possible. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a sense in which justice, that is commonly supposed to concern other persons, is not; gratitude returns in large measure unto itself. There is not a man who, when he has benefited his neighbor, has not benefited himself, — I do not mean for the reason that he whom you have aided will desire to aid you, or that he whom you have defended will desire to protect you, or that an example of good conduct returns in a circle to benefit the doer, just as examples of bad conduct recoil upon their authors, and as men find no pity if they suffer wrongs which they themselves have demonstrated the possibility of committing; but that the reward for all the virtues lies in the virtues themselves. For they are not practised with a view to recompense; the wages of a good deed is to have done it. I am grateful, not in order that my neighbour, provoked by the earlier act of kindness, may be more ready to benefit me, but simply in order that I may perform a most pleasant and beautiful act; I feel grateful, not because it profits me, but because it pleases me.” ― Seneca
44. “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” ― Seneca
45. “You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.” ― Seneca
46. “The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” ― Seneca
Quotes by Swami Vivekananda
47. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.” ― Swami Vivekananda
48. “In a day, when you don’t come across any problems – you can be sure that you are traveling in a wrong path” ― Swami Vivekananda
49. “The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves.” ― Swami Vivekananda
50. “The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.” ― Swami Vivekananda
51. “Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached.” ― Swami Vivekananda
52. “The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.” ― Swami Vivekananda
53. “A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to.” ― Swami Vivekananda
54. “All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love’s sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live.” ― Swami Vivekananda
55. “We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.” ― Swami Vivekananda
56. “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy – by one, or more, or all of these – and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.” ― Swami Vivekananda
57. “Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.” ― Swami Vivekananda
58. “Do not believe a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.” ― Swami Vivekananda
59. “How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leave them, for without his absence they cannot develop themselves. Plants always remain small under a big tree.” ― Swami Vivekananda
60. “All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. You can do any thing and everything, without even the guidance of any one. Stand up and express the divinity within you.” ― Swami Vivekananda
61. “Anything that makes weak – physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison.” ― Swami Vivekananda
62. “Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, ‘Thy will be done.’ We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.” ― Swami Vivekananda
63. “Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!” ― Swami Vivekananda
Quotes by Epicurus
64. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus
65. “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.” ― Epicurus
66. “Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.” ― Epicurus
67. “It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.” ― Epicurus
68. “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.” ― Epicurus
69. “The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?” ― Epicurus
70. “The purpose of all knowledge, metaphysical as well as scientific, is to achieve what Epicurus called ataraxia, freedom from irrational fears and anxieties of all sorts—in brief, peace of mind.” ― Epicurus
71. “The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.” ― Epicurus
72. “Fools are tormented by the memory of former evils; wise men have the delight of renewing in grateful remembrance the blessings of the past. We have the power both to obliterate our misfortunes in an almost perpetual forgetfulness and to summon up pleasant and agreeable memories of our successes. But when we fix our mental vision closely on the events of the past, then sorrow or gladness ensues according as these were evil or good.” ― Epicurus
73. “You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” ― Epicurus
74. “I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.” ― Epicurus
75. “The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.” ― Epicurus
76. “Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.” ― Epicurus
Quotes by Aesop
77. “The desire for imaginary benefits often involves the loss of present blessings.” — Aesop
78. “A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.” ― Aesop
79. “If you choose bad companions, no one will believe that you are anything but bad yourself.” ― Aesop
80. “No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth” ― Aesop
81. “The Sun is bad enough even while he is single, drying up our marshes with his heat as he does. But what will become of us if he marries and and begets other suns?” ― Aesop
82. “The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales.” ― Aesop
83. “Every man carries two bags about him, one in front and one behind, and both are full of faults. The bag in front contains his neighbors’ faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.” ― Aesop
84. “Every man carries Two Bags about with him, one in front and one behind, and both are packed full of faults. The Bag in front contains his neighbours’ faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.” ― Aesop
85. “Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find – nothing.” ― Aesop
86. “Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations.” ― Aesop
87. “In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest.” ― Aesop
88. “You will only injure yourself if you take notice of despicable enemies.” ― Aesop
89. “Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.” ― Aesop
90. “The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.” ― Aesop
91. “There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.” ― Aesop
92. “United you will be more than a match for your enemies. But if you quarrel and separate, your weakness will put you at the mercy of those who attack you.” ― Aesop
93. “Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” ― Aesop
Quotes by Plato
94. “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.” ― Plato
95. “Man…is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.” ― Plato
96. “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for the reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part, they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.” ― Plato
97. “The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrongs often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.” — Plato
98. “To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man, but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil.” ― Plato
99. “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.” ― Plato
100. “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” ― Plato
101. “Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they’re unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who’ve had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people’s property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.” ― Plato
102. “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” ― Plato
103. “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” ― Plato
104. “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.” ― Plato
105. “The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.” ― Plato
106. “Excellence” is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act “rightly” because we are “excellent”, in fact we achieve “excellence” by acting “rightly”.” ― Plato
107. “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” ― Plato
108. “That’s what education should be,” I said, “the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way.” ― Plato
109. “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” ― Plato
110. “The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” ― Plato
111. “Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” ― Plato
112. “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” ― Plato
113. “Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” ― Plato
Quotes by Aristotle
114. “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” ― Aristotle
115. “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.” ― Aristotle
116. “The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.” ― Aristotle
117. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ― Aristotle
118. “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” ― Aristotle
119. “The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things… and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.” ― Aristotle
120. “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” ― Aristotle
121. “Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances.” ― Aristotle
122. “The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.” ― Aristotle
123. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle
124. “My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.” ― Aristotle
125. “Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” ― Aristotle
126. “One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.” ― Aristotle
127. “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.” ― Aristotle
128. “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
129. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” ― Aristotle
130. “Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.” ― Aristotle
131. “It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.” ― Aristotle
132. “Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.” ― Aristotle
133. “Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.” — Aristotle
134. “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” — Aristotle
135. “Bad people…are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.” ― Aristotle
136. “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ” ― Aristotle
137. “Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.” ― Aristotle
138. “I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.” ― Aristotle
139. “It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.” ― Aristotle
140. “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” ― Aristotle
141. “Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.” ― Aristotle
Quotes by Socrates
142. “It would be better for me… that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.” ― Socrates
143. “I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.” ― Socrates
144. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates
145. “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” ― Socrates
146. “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” ― Socrates
147. “If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.” ― Socrates
148. “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ― Socrates
149. “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.” ― Socrates
150. “If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.” ― Socrates
151. “One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.” ― Socrates
152. “If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.” ― Socrates
153. “The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.”― Socrates
Quotes by Alan Wilson Watts
154. “What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.” ― Alan Watts
155. “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
156. “Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.” ― Alan Watts
157. “You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” ― Alan Watts
158. “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
159. “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” ― Alan Watts
160. “When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.” — Alan Watts
161. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
162. “A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.” ― Alan Watts
163. “But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.” ― Alan Watts
164. “If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
165. “We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason or doesn’t have a purpose. In this respect it’s unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” ― Alan Watts
166. “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” ― Alan Watts
167. “Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.” ― Alan Watts
168. “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
169. “One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
170. “If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don’t like doing, which is stupid.” ― Alan Watts
171. “When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
172. “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” ― Alan Watts
173. “Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.” ― Alan Watts
174. “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” ― Alan Watts
175. “What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are “coins” for real things.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
176. “Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
Powerful Quotes From History For Mental Resilience
177. “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
178. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
179. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
180. “In our control is the most beautiful and important thing, the thing because of which even the god himself is happy— namely, the proper use of our impressions. We must concern ourselves absolutely with the things that are under our control and entrust the things not in our control to the universe.” ― Musonius Rufus
181. “The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” ― Heraclitus
182. “Stoics would recommend, for example, that I concern myself with whether my wife loves me, even though this is something over which I have some but not complete control. But when I do concern myself with this, my goal should not be the external goal of making her love me; no matter how hard I try, I could fail to achieve this goal and would as a result be quite upset. Instead, my goal should be an internal goal: to behave, to the best of my ability, in a lovable manner. Similarly, my goal with respect to my boss should be to do my job to the best of my ability. These are goals I can achieve no matter how my wife and my boss subsequently react to my efforts. By internalizing his goals in daily life, the Stoic is able to preserve his tranquility while dealing with things over which he has only partial control.” ― Irvine
183. “Remember that among the things over which we have complete control are the goals we set for ourselves. I think that when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control, such as winning a tennis match, he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself. In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals. Thus, his goal in playing tennis will not be to win a match (something external, over which he has only partial control) but to play to the best of his ability in the match (something internal, over which he has complete control). By choosing this goal, he will spare himself frustration or disappointment should he lose the match: Since it was not his goal to win the match, he will not have failed to attain his goal, as long as he played his best. His tranquility will not be disrupted.” ― Irvine
184. “Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.” ― W. Somerset Maugham
185. “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
186. “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” ― Confucious
187. “The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them,” the first scientist wrote, “but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration and not the sayings of human beings whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of of its content, attack it from every side. he should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.” ― Ibn al-Haytham
188. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ― Rumi
189. “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
190. “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.” ― Richard P. Feynman
191. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. “Can they be brought together?” This is a practical question. We must get down to it. “I despise intelligence” really means: “I cannot bear my doubts.” ― Albert Camus
192. “To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” ― Bertrand Russell
193. “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” ― William James
194. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw
195. “Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli
196. “As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.” ― Bertrand Russell
197. “Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.” ― Hermann Hesse
198. “Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” ― Lao Tzu
199. “The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.” ― Robert M. Pirsig
Featured Image by jcomp on Freepik. Quotes collected from Goodreads and YouTube
