100 INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES TO PURSUE YOUR DREAMS

Ever since I started my blog, the word "inspiration" has been one of the key subjects of my personal posts. I've always wanted to inspire other people through my words or actions. I've always thought that quotes are one effective way to inspire people when they read them, including me. 

I googled and I found these encouraging inspirational quotes and motivational quotes that can help one get through a bad circumstance and pursue life’s dreams. In his book, 4 Keys to Happiness and Fulfillment at Work: Employee Engagement for Everyone,  Kevin Kruse shares these quotes in the spirit of self motivation. 

Here are 100 inspirational quotes by famous personalities:

1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
2. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
3. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
4. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
5. If you can dream it, you can do it. –Walt Disney
6. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
7. I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan
8. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
9. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
10. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
11. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
12. 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
13. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –John Maxwell
14. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins
15. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha
16. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
17. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
18. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
19. Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. –Napoleon Hill
20. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
21. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
22. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
23. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
24. 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
25. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
26. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
27. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
28. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
30. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
31. Inspiration exists, but it must find you working. –Pablo Picasso
32. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh
33. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
34. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. –Henry Ford
35. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
37. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck
38. Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.  Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?” – Brian Tracy
39. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
40. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
41. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
42. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
43. Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. –Christopher Reeve
44. Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
45. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
46. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb
47. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller
48. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucious
49. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
50. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu

51. The difference between a successful person and others is not lack of strength not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will. –Vince Lombardi
52. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
53. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. –Arthur C. Clarke
54. 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
55. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
56. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
57. Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. –Vincent Van Gogh
58. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
59. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
60. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. –Walt Disney
61. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci
62. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
63. Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes.  You are free. –Jim Morrison
64. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan
65. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
66. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby
67. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
68. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
69. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach
70. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
71. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey
72. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
73. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
74. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.  –Ann Landers
75. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
76. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
77. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. –Frank Zappa
78. Education costs money.  But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
79. Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
80. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
81. Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
82. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
83. You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
84. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
85. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
86. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
87. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
88. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
89. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
90. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
91. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
92. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
93. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
94. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
95. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
96. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
97. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
98. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
99. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs
100. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar

Thanks for reading and I hope you get inspired. It is a good start to pursue your dreams.