Quotes Archives

The 21 Best & Most Underrated Dumbledore Quotes

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. I’ll never forget that name. I was 16 years old when I first read it. He revealed it in The Order of the Phoenix. That was literally half a lifetime ago for me — and I’ve been waiting to be asked for Dumbledore’s full name on a quiz show ever since. Dumbledore is neither the most popular wizard in fiction, nor the best-looking. But he is definitely a contender for “most powerful,” and when it comes to being the wisest, he really only has one challenger: Gandalf the Grey from Lord of the Rings. Today, let’s see just how wise Dumbledore is — by looking at the very best Dumbledore quotes!

Welcome! My name is Nik, and today, I’d like to put more than 20 years of fierce Harry Potter fandom to good use. In this organized list, we’ll cover the 10 most popular pieces of Dumbledore’s wisdom based on reader votes. I’ll also share what I think are the 10 most underrated Dumbledore quotes you’ve probably never heard before. I’ll stick to original quotes from the books and include each line’s original source, of course. For good measure, I’ll end with a very special quote and add two bonus sections with movie quotes — and one line everyone thinks came from Dumbledore but didn’t. Finally, I’ve made some custom images for you, which you can use to share your favorite Dumbledore lines on social media or with friends.

Navigating this list is easy: Just use the table of contents below to jump to whichever section interests you the most. If you feel like sharing a quote, simply highlight it on the page, and various sharing options will appear. Of course, you can also just skip to the images section at the end of this post, pick your favorite, and share that.

Now, it wasn’t a wizard who said that motivation doesn’t last and that, therefore, like bathing, we should do it daily — though Zig Ziglar sure has a wizard-sounding name. However, I’m sure Dumbledore would agree that inspiration is no small thing, so let’s get to it!

The 10 Most Popular Albus Dumbledore Quotes

If you’re wondering which of Dumbledore’s countless pieces of advice are the most popular with readers and fans, I did the homework for you. Below, you’ll find the top 10 quotes from Dumbledore, based on real reader votes from Goodreads‘ over 100 million members. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several of them rank among Goodreads’ most popular quotes of all time.

Dumbledore’s highest-ranking quote has over 50,000 votes, and #10 still has almost 14,000 votes. Here are the 10 most famous quotes from Albus Dumbledore:

1. “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

2. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

3. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”

4. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

5. “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

6. “You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!”

7. “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”

8. “The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”

9. “Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory.”

10. “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”

Sources

Chapter 18, Dobby’s Reward, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Chapter 12, The Mirror of Erised, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 17, The Man with Two Faces, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 35, King’s Cross, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Chapter 17, The Man with Two Faces, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 36, The Parting of the Ways, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Chapter 35, King’s Cross, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Chapter 17, The Man with Two Faces, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 37, The Beginning, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Chapter 36, The Parting of the Ways, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The 10 Most Underrated Dumbledore Quotes You’ve Likely Never Heard

Given Dumbledore is a main character in a series spanning seven books — a character people make two-hour long videos about just to understand him better — we could keep dropping his wisdom for days. However, while his most popular lines also contain some of his most important ones, you won’t catch some of his best but underrated bits by just looking at his “most liked” list of quotes.

That’s why I went a little deeper down the rabbit hole and dug up 10 more gems of his you likely haven’t heard. I’ll include some context for each one as to why I think it’s great in the notes section below the sources. Here they are:

11. “As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all — the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”

12. “Every guest in this Hall will be welcomed back here at any time, should they wish to come. I say to you all, once again — in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.”

13. “I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE —” He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions. “You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

14. “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

15. “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young … and I seem to have forgotten lately…”

16. “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. He needs to know who has put him through the ordeal he has suffered tonight, and why.”

17. “Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!”

18. “Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”

19. “It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”

20. “Ah” said Dumbledore gently, “yes. Yes, I thought we might hit that little snag. […] You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I am going to — what is the phrase? ‘Come quietly.’ I am afraid I am not going to come quietly at all, Cornelius. I have absolutely no intention of being sent to Azkaban. I could break out, of course — but what a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of a whole host of things I would rather be doing.”

Sources

Chapter 17, The Man with Two Faces, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 37, The Beginning, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Chapter 37, The Lost Prophecy, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Chapter 17, The Man with Two Faces, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chapter 37, The Lost Prophecy, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Chapter 35, Veritaserum, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Chapter 23, Horcruxes, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Chapter 37, The Lost Prophecy, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Chapter 35, King’s Cross, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Chapter 27, The Centaur and the Sneak, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Notes

This quote shows Dumbledore understands how easily power can corrupt and elegantly encourages a young Harry to stay humble at the same time.
The speech Dumbledore gives to the students of all three wizarding schools at the end of GoF contains several of his best quotes (quote #9 on this list follows shortly after this one) and is a great piece of writing overall. The “let’s set our differences aside bit” often gets neglected.
Harry’s rage against Dumbledore after Sirius dies is one of the most important conversations in the series. Sadly, it was completely neutered in the movie. The whole passage is worth re-reading because it captures what grief can do to us really well. It’s also a masterclass in conflict management on Dumbledore’s part.
This is such a powerful life lesson, and I’m glad Dumbledore gave it to Harry early on. It’ll reoccur throughout the entire series as Harry continues to educate everyone around him to use Voldemort’s name, for we must face our fears head on.
This is how Dumbledore begins his explanation of why Sirius’ death is his fault right after Harry’s outburst (quote #13). It’s simply a genius bit of insight on J.K. Rowling’s part, and I’d never thought of it like this before. Amazing!
For as much as Dumbledore was pulling the strings behind Harry’s life, he did so regretfully. He was always torn between clueing Harry in and leaving him in the dark, and he often revealed more than he should have. Thankfully, Harry could handle it, and he always did, indeed, recover.
This reminds me of a great picture in which a sole orator stands on a board hanging over a cliff. The only reason he doesn’t fall down is because the crowd stands on the board, keeping him in mid-air. If the people were to turn their back on him, he’d plummet to his death. A great bit of culture, history, and encouragement in this line from Dumbledore.
This is also part of Dumbledore’s conversation with Harry after Sirius’ death, explaining why Sirius treated his house elf, Kreacher, so badly for so long. When someone openly dislikes us, we know what we are up against. When they simply ignore us, we make up all kinds of horror scenarios that plague us until we have certainty. You can’t get along with everyone in life, but you can always be honest and communicate clearly.
After seven years, we finally learn why Dumbledore, one of the greatest wizards ever, didn’t just take on Voldemort himself. Why Harry? Here, we at last get an answer — and it was worth the wait.
For all his slyness and plotting behind a quiet facade, Dumbledore knew when to make a statement, and boy, was he a badass in this one. Even the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black, a former Slytherin headmaster of Hogwarts, can’t help but admit after Dumbledore’s flashy exit: “You know, Minister, I disagree with Dumbledore on many counts … but you cannot deny he’s got style…”

The Last Words Dumbledore Ever Said to Harry (19 Years Later)

For our last quote, I’ve prepared something special. Earlier this year, I finally went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London. It’s a stage play set 19 years after the events of The Deathly Hallows. Whether you consider it canon or not is up to you, but J.K. Rowling wrote the original story it is based upon, and she considers it “the eighth Harry Potter story.” I liked it.

The play mostly revolves around the children of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco, but it does fill in gaps from the original story here and there. Naturally, Dumbledore makes an appearance. Of course, the long-dead headmaster is now confined to his portrait in the current Hogwarts headmaster’s office — and a few others, one of which happens to be placed in Harry’s office at the Ministry of Magic.

Twice throughout the play, Harry asks Dumbledore for both advice and closure. Why couldn’t Harry save Cedric Diggory? Why did he have to suffer in Privet Drive? What’s blocking Harry from connecting with his son, and why didn’t Dumbledore, the only true father-figure in his life, ever tell him that he loved him? After Dumbledore tells him that he did, he forever departs Harry’s life — but not without giving him one last piece of amazing, typically Dumbledorish wisdom:

“Those that we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch. Paint…and memory…and love.”

I highly recommend you go see the play for yourself or read the script*. Form your own opinion, and see if you like this continuation of the Potterverse. This quote, however? I think it’s rock solid. It even mirrors something Dumbledore told Harry early on, in Chapter 22, Owl Post Again, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?” Dumbledore may no longer be around to fix his mistakes, but as long as Harry knows that he loved him, he’ll never really be gone.

Bonus: 2 Quotes From Movie-Dumbledore That Were Not in the Books

Since this post only covers original quotes from the books, as a bonus, here are two famous Dumbledore lines from the movies that people love. The first is part of Dumbledore’s “Welcome back to Hogwarts” speech in The Prisoner of Azkaban, reminding the students to not let the Dementors hanging about the castle grounds get them down:

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

The second happens during Harry and Dumbledore’s last “meeting” at King’s Cross in The Deathly Hallows:

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time (not just among Dumbledore’s). It captures the entire Harry Potter saga — be it for the words a wizard must use to conjure any spell, from “Expelliarmus” to “Avada Kedavra,” or for the power of a great story to change our lives, just like J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter.

I love this quote so much, I wrote an essay based on its theme, which became one of my most popular pieces ever (almost 50,000 views!). It’s called All These Flaws You See In Yourself Aren’t Real. If you want even more Dumbledore and magic, you can read it here.

Bonus: The 1 Quote Dumbledore Didn’t Say (But We All Think He Did)

The most popular quote from the Potterverse, at least on Goodreads, is the following, with a whopping 100,000+ votes — a feat which only 12 quotes have ever accomplished on the platform:

“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” — Sirius Black

Yes, that’s right. Even though it sounds perfectly Dumbledorish, this line actually came from Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather. It’s from chapter 27, Padfoot Returns, from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

In that book, Hermione leads the house elf revolution after coming to care deeply about the often mistreated species, who usually act as servants. At one point, Ron and Hermione argue about the importance of Barty Crouch, the Minister for Magic, sacking his house elf in a suspicious situation. Ron wants to dismiss the topic of the elf quickly, but Sirius interrupts him and sides with Hermione. He agrees that she’s on to something with Crouch, and that’s when he says the above line.

So there you have it! Not a Dumbledore line. That said, as tragic and great a character as he already is, Sirius Black sure deserves the extra credit for this quote, and I hope you’ll remember his name the next time you see it.

More Dumbledore Quotes

The best way to find even more great Dumbledore quotes, if you ask me, is to simply read (or re-read) the Harry Potter books.* Books have a tendency to reveal to us whatever we need at that moment. Every time you re-read a great book, different parts will speak to you. How long has it been since you last read the books? Chances are, you’re a very different person now, and so you’ll find new, interesting, relevant lines from Dumbledore (and the other characters, of course) that’ll have a big impact on your life that you never noticed before.

Here’s a short overview of the series, long with a button to buy all the books (or individual ones). If you do, you’ll also support me and Four Minute Books with a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!

Favorite Quote

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” — Albus Dumbledore

The Books in One Sentence

Harry Potter is the story of an orphan boy who, despite believing he is entirely ordinary, must face a great destiny to save not just everyone he loves but the entire world of wizardry and magic — a world he didn’t even know existed until he was eleven years old.

Why should you read it?

Come on! Really? Asking for reasons to read Harry Potter is akin to asking why you should read at all. It is one of the greatest fantasy sagas of all time, a character-building series for teens and adults alike, and a masterclass in fantastic writing and world-building. Just get the books, will ya? You won’t regret it, I promise.

Key Takeaways

Home isn’t a place, and family isn’t a relation — our happiness depends on people, and who we surround ourselves with is something we can choose.
Magic can’t solve everything, and even the greatest magic is useless without love.
Anyone can be a leader if they choose to stand up for others, but often, the people who only reluctantly embrace the power that comes with responsibility are best suited for the job.

If you want to learn more, you can get the entire 7-book collection (or individual titles) here:

Buy on Amazon*

The Best Albus Dumbledore Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

If you want to share any quote on this page, you can use our “highlight and share feature.” Just highlight the quote, and sharing options will appear. That said, we also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, while others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

We considered using some AI art for our backgrounds, but since Dumbledore had not just one, but two great actors playing him in the movies, we stuck with movie stills from the films. The late Richard Harris portrayed Dumbledore in the first two films (but only after his granddaughter threatened she would never speak to him again if he didn’t). After he passed away, Michael Gambon inherited the role, and he, too, did a great job, especially for the later, darker installments of the series. Here’s to two great actors bringing a wonderful character to life. Happy sharing!

Share on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Share on Instagram

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Conclusion

Phew. Finite Incantatem! That’s the end of our list of the 21 best Dumbledore quotes. What are your thoughts? Did I pick well? Did you enjoy the bonus quotes and learn something new? I hope so. In any case, if you want to share a quote I’ve missed or tell us your favorite, simply tweet at us, and perhaps, your spell, I mean, quote, will make it on the next iteration of this list. Until then, may you be as calm as Dumbledore, and may we all live to become at least half as wise.

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 30 Smartest, Funniest, and Most Inspiring Elon Musk Quotes

The first time I read Elon Musk‘s name was in Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One. That was in 2014. Back then, not everyone in the world knew who Elon was. Sure, he was already a billionaire, already “famous” by conventional standards, but he was far from the world’s richest person, nor the most-followed account on Twitter. Today, everyone “knows” Elon Musk — but few people actually know anything more than what they read about him in the media. Whether you want to get to know the real Elon or are simply looking for some of his best lines and words of inspiration, today’s list of the best Elon Musk quotes will deliver!

Hi there! My name is Nik. I’m a writer. While I’m not the world’s biggest Elon expert, I’ve been following him for almost ten years. I read his biography, and I’ve watched many an interview and documentary to experience the man in his own words. As such, I have a good overview of what he said when and where, and today, I’d like to put that knowledge to good use.

This organized collection will highlight the 10 most inspiring lines from Elon over the years. We’ll also include his 10 smartest, most-likely-to-blow-your-mind arguments, and his 10 funniest jokes. Unlike most quote lists, we’ll provide the original source for each quote. Finally, we’ll share where you can find even more Elon Musk quotes, briefly summarize his life for you, and provide some premade, custom images you can use to share your favorite “Muskisms” to social media.

The easiest way to navigate this list is to jump to whichever section interests you the most using the table of contents below. If you want to share a quote, you can highlight it and various options will appear. Or, just skip to the images section and pick your favorite.

Now, like Elon once said when asked why he put $100+ million, most of his fortune, into a rocket company and a car company instead of sipping Mai Tais on the beach — “Needed to get going on accelerating sustainable energy & making life multi-planetary” — let’s get going!

The 10 Most Inspiring Elon Musk Quotes

Elon gets his inspiration from bringing about a positive, hopeful, optimistic future for humanity. That has been his driving motivator since he was a teenager, and everything he does maps to that vision. In turn, we can get a lot of inspiration from him simply by observing him. Watching the lone warrior fight against the odds makes us want to do and be better, too.

Every now and then, however, Elon also speaks to inspiration more directly. Here are what I think to be his 10 most heartening lines.

1. “Never. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated. For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”

2. “I think people can choose to be not ordinary. You know, they can choose to not necessarily conform to the conventions that were taught to them by their parents. So, yes, I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”

3. “A source of strength, hm. That’s really not how I think about things. For me it’s simply: This is something that is important to get done, and we we should just keep doing it or die trying. I don’t need a source of strength. [Quitting] is not in my nature, and I don’t care about optimism or pessimism. F*ck that, we’re gonna get it done.”

4. “You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.”

5. “[Mars] would just be the greatest adventure. Ever. And very exciting. And I think we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can’t just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.”

6. “Take risks now. Do something bold. You won’t regret it.”

7. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favor.”

8. “When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, okay, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength — 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.”

9. “I feel fear quite strongly. It’s not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of the fear. People shouldn’t think, ‘I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn’t do it.’ It’s normal to feel fear. There’d have to be something mentally wrong [with you] if you didn’t feel fear. […] If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.”

10. “I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good phrase for doing a startup: ‘It’s like eating glass and staring into the abyss.’ If you’re sort of wired to do it, then you should do it, but not otherwise. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”

Sources

This one I pieced together from an interview and his message to SpaceX employees after the third Falcon launch failure.
From an interview at SpaceX.
Talking to Lex Fridman on his podcast.
From his commencement speech at Caltech in 2012.
Talking to Vanity Fair in 2014.
From his USC commencement speech in 2014.
On 60 Minutes in 2012.
From a documentary I can’t locate in full.
In a 2016 interview with Y Combinator.
To students of Draper University at a Tesla factory tour.

Bonus: For more Elon motivation, watch this video. There are thousands of them out there, so don’t get lost for too long, but that one really blew my socks off.

The 10 Smartest, Most-Likely-to-Blow-Your-Mind Elon Musk Quotes

No matter how inspiring you might be, you don’t become the world’s richest man simply by being someone others find encouraging. You have to change the world. From electric cars to sustainable energy to reusable rockets, sustainable AI, brain interfaces, high-speed transportation, and even a walking, learning-capable robot, Elon continues to do so in more ways than one.

As a shy kid with Asperger’s Syndrome, Elon devoured books about science and philosophy as a teenager. He also holds degrees in economics and physics. Most of his ideas that seem genius to you and me, however, he simply discovered while doing an incredible amount of work in a wide-ranging area of disciplines. Here are the 10 Elon quotes most likely to blow your mind:

11. “Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”

12. “If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that’s a good thing. It doesn’t have to change the world. If you make something that has high value to people, and frankly even if it’s a little game or, you know, some improvement in photo-sharing — if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, I think that’s fine. Having something that makes a big difference but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes an even smaller difference but affects a vast number of people. Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good.”

13. “I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

14. “Somebody could say — and in fact people do — that battery packs are really expensive, and that’s just the way they will always be, because that’s the way they have been in the past. Well, no, that’s pretty dumb. Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing. […] For batteries, they would say, ‘historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt-hour, and so it’s not going to be much better than that in the future.’ So first principles would be to say, ‘What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a steel can.’ So break that down on a material basis and say, ‘If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange, what would each of those things cost? Oh, jeez, it’s like $80 per kilowatt-hour.’ So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”

15. “It’s very important to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. This is something that people tend to avoid because it’s painful, but I think this is a very common mistake. To not actively seek out and listen to negative feedback. […] When friends get a product, I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.’ Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. You really need to sort of coax negative feedback. If somebody’s your friend or at least not your enemy, and they’re giving you negative feedback, then they may be wrong, but it’s coming from a good place.”

16. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

17. “I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that ‘A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And that’s really true. If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you’d be burned at the stake for. Being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having, effectively, with the Internet, a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world’s information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This is stuff that would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren’t even imagined in times past. That weren’t even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well, if I can do some of those things – if I can advance technology, then that’s like magic, and that would be really cool.”

18. “A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. [But] that is a sign of a healthy, functioning, free speech situation.”

19. “One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

20. “Always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make, and I’m guilty of it too, is wishful thinking. You want something to be true, even if it isn’t true. And so you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. [So] just take that approach, that you’re always to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong.”

Sources

In source with head of TED, Chris Anderson, in 2013.
Pieced together from two sections of the Y Combinator interview (one and two).
In a Reddit AMA.
Talking to Kevin Rose.
Also from the Kevin Rose interview.
Talking to Lance Ulanoff for Mashable.
From the Caltech commencement speech.
Live at TED 2022.
As quoted in his biography.
During the World Government Summit in 2017.

Bonus: If you’re looking for more smart ideas from the man and want to get deeper into his thinking process, here are 3 of my favorite interviews with him (one short, one medium, one long) that’ll get you the most bang for your buck — or smarts for your time, in this case:

The 10 Funniest Elon Musk Quotes

For all his serious, civilization-affecting activities, Elon seems to still have plenty of fun along the way. Unlike most other billionaires, business magnates, politicians, and otherwise influential figures, however, he actually shares his joy with us. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is notorious for posting memes on Twitter, cracking jokes, and often following through on what at first seems like a prank announcement.

From labeling Tesla’s car model lineup with letters spelling “S3XY” to selling flamethrowers, “boring hats,” and burned hair to repainting the sign on Twitter’s headquarters to look like it spells “Titter,” Elon’s antics have made for many laughs over the years. At times, they’ve also gotten him into trouble. In any case, here are Elon’s 10 funniest tweets and jokes:

21. After his acquisition of Twitter to prioritize free speech on the platform again: “Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”

22. “I would like to die on Mars — just not on impact.”

23. On wrecking his McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel in the passenger seat: “We’re driving up Sand Hill Road, and Peter says: ‘So, what can this do?’ And then, probably number one on the list of famous last words, I said: ‘Watch this.’”

24. While entering Twitter HQ after acquiring the company, holding a sink: “Let that sink in!”

25. After almost dying from a misdiagnosed type of malaria, which he acquired on his first vacation, a trip to Africa, in years: “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: Vacations will kill you.”

26. “If there’s ever a scandal about me, please call it Elongate.”

27. “I put the art in fart.”

28. For the chemistry nerds: “Technically, alcohol is a solution.”

29. When asked why so many of the SpaceX rocket launches happen at night: “It’s much easier to do the CGI that way.”

30. On the need to go to Mars and beyond: “We can’t be one of those lame one-planet civilizations!”

Sources

Bonus: If you want more fun Elon, here’s him hosting Meme Review PewDiePie-style, and here’s a collection of all his appearances in TV shows, cartoons, and Hollywood movies.

More Elon Musk Quotes

The more famous someone becomes, the more people love to put words in their mouth. That’s why there’s a plethora of fake Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and, well, Elon Musk quotes. Therefore, it’s always best to verify your quotes and stick to their sources. When it comes to Elon, those can be his Twitter account and in-person interviews.

But the best bulk source for more Elon quotes, in my opinion, is Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future*, the only authorized biography of Elon so far, based on more than 30 hours of interviews with him directly and over 200 people who know him. The book is from 2015, and there’s a new biography by famed biographer Walter Isaacson coming out in September 2023, but until then, this one’s a great account of the early Tesla and SpaceX days — and Elon’s early life, of course.

Here’s a short overview of the book and two snazzy buttons to either buy the book (and support us with a small commission at no extra charge to you) or read our free, four-minute summary.

Favorite Quote

“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.” — Elon Musk

The Book in One Sentence

Elon Musk is the first official biography of the creator of SolarCity, SpaceX and Tesla, based on over 30 hours of conversation time between author Ashlee Vance and Musk himself, highlighting his complicated childhood, the way he makes decisions and navigates the world, and how he managed to disrupt multiple industries, all with the goal of saving humanity.

Why should you read it?

Whether you’re a casual observer, hesitant skeptic, or diehard Elon fan, this book provides a great, mostly objective description of his life. It’s easy to judge someone based on a headline some reporter wrote to get clicks and make money. Truly getting to know someone takes work. At the same time, spending a few hours reading a book isn’t that much effort. After reading this book, you’ll know and understand Elon Musk better than 99% of all people on the planet — and there’s a big chance you’ll learn something new for your own journey along the way.

Key Takeaways

Answering questions is easy, asking the right questions is what’s hard.
Use a success-through-determination approach to accomplish your goals.
Unify all of your work under the roof of one giant goal to have a bigger impact on the world.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free, four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself:

Read on Four Minute Books

_____

Buy on Amazon*

The Best Elon Musk Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

As mentioned in the intro, you can use the “highlight and share” feature to post any quote on this page to your socials. We’ve also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, while others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

Elon is obsessed with truth. It’s important to him to understand the world as it truly is and for people to know what his real motives are. He’s also skeptical of the advent of AI. He believes it’s an important and inevitable technology, but also that it must be realized in the right way. As such, we’ve decided to not use AI-generated background images this time. Instead, we stuck with real pictures of Elon Musk, the human being — we hope you’ll enjoy and he won’t mind. Happy sharing!

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Who Is Elon Musk? (His Life in 500 Words)

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971, Elon grew up in a large family of constant travelers. His dad was an engineer and pilot and had a small plane. Elon was a shy and introverted kid, often bullied in school. He usually preferred books and video games to people, and he even sold a game he programmed at age 12 for $500. Elon’s parents divorced when he was nine. After mostly living with his father until he was of age, he became estranged from him and moved to Canada with his brother Kimbal. Initially, they made ends meet working odd jobs, as lumberjacks, for example.

Elon’s goal was always to reach and live in the US, the land of opportunity. He knew it would be easier to get a visa in Canada, and he was right. After attending university for a bit in Ontario, he switched to University of Pennsylvania and attained Bachelor degrees in both physics and economics. Instead of continuing in academia, however, Elon dropped out of his PhD program to start an early internet company with Kimbal. Zip2 brought businesses online and helped newspapers host city guides on the web. They sold the business for $300 million at the height of the dot-com boom.

After that, Elon founded X.com, a payments service which competed and later merged with PayPal. The latter was sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion. Musk then started SpaceX, a reusable-rocket company, and, after getting it off the ground, became Tesla’s CEO in 2008. The early days of those companies were brutal. On the outside, Elon looked wealthy. But of his $180 million fortune, not a single cent was left after funding these ventures. He even had to borrow money for rent.

Between funding issues that almost bankrupted both companies several times, four failed rocket launches before one finally worked, short sellers trying to manipulate Tesla’s stock, and three years of “production hell,” during which Elon slept on the floor in the Tesla factory as they desperately tried to ramp up Model 3 output to mass scale, his path to success has been anything but easy. Fortunately, today, 15 years after becoming Tesla’s CEO, Elon is still mainly known for being head of the electric car manufacturer. However, he has also started a slew of other ventures since.

From OpenAI (a non-profit to further controlled AI development) to Starlink (hardware for remote internet access from anywhere), Neuralink (a direct brain-to-computer interface system), and single-handedly buying Twitter, it’s hard to keep track of everything Elon does — and, as in his illustrious and wandering life path, there’s a lesson in that we can take away: Study widely, dive into anything you’re interested in, and never stop learning.

If Elon can teach himself how to program computer games, how to build rockets, and how to get a factory to churn out 100,000+ cars per month, there’s almost nothing you can’t learn either. We hope our list of quotes will inspire you to go after something you’re passionate about or, if you’re already doing that, give it even a little more effort than you already have been.

Conclusion

That’s it! That concludes our list of the 30 best quotes from Elon Musk. What do you think? Did we make some good picks? Or is there something you’re missing? In either case, tweet us your favorite Elon quote, and we’ll continue to occasionally update this list as Elon says more inspiring, smart, and funny things — which I’m sure he’ll keep doing regardless of what anyone thinks of him — and if nothing else, that’s a quality worth emulating.

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

414 Short Inspirational Quotes to Motivate You Right Now (2023)

It’s 1 PM. You’re still tired from eating a too-big lunch (again), and your third coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. What can you do to get through the day? How can you muster your courage, focus your attention, and summon some extra energy to keep doing a few more hours of work that matters? The answer: Short inspirational quotes — and in this organized list, you’ll find exactly the one you need.

Hi, my name is Nik! I’m the founder of Four Minute Books. In 2016, I published 365 book summaries. That personal challenge is how this site began. Since then, our library has grown to over 1,200 titles, and, needless to say, my tiny team and I have come across an inspiring line or two along the way.

At Four Minute Books, everything we do follows a system. That’s why this list is different. Instead of a loose collection of the same quotes from the same people, quickly cobbled together and many of them misattributed, we went above and beyond to get you the very best, short inspiring quotes — a whopping 414 of them, to be exact — following a strict set of rules and selection criteria.

Whether you want to find a new perspective on a challenging problem, stop procrastinating and do the important work that lies in front of you, or light your inner spark to start something new and magical, we’ll help you find the right words, right now.

How To Use This List

We’ll kick off this list with the most popular inspirational quotes of all time based on real reader votes. Then, we’ll move through quotes about different themes, like motivation, success, and relationships. Next, I’ll share some personal favorites of mine from people I know (real quotes!), my own writing (8 years and counting), and hard-hitters that changed my perspective forever. After that, we’ll look at short quotes from some extremely inspiring people and professional one-line wisdom-dispensers, like Seth Godin and Brené Brown. We’ll also discover some magical lines from Harry Potter and other famous fantasy worlds, closing out with wisdom from “untouchable” heroes like Yoda, Bruce Lee, and the ancient Stoics.

Of course, you can also share to your heart’s content: If you highlight any quote, sharing options will appear, and the second-to-last section of this list comes packed with 100 pre-formatted images for various social media platforms. For more details about the methodology behind this list, go to the last section of this list.

Finally, this is list is super easy to navigate, thanks to the table of contents above. Simply click on any section, and jump right to the kind of wisdom you need right now.

We tried our best to make this the last list of short inspiring quotes you’ll ever need. Bookmark it, skim it, and browse it until you find the line that helps you move forward. And if you have an idea on how we can make it better, don’t hesitate to tell us on Twitter.

Here are 414 absolutely epic, short motivational quotes!

The 34 Most Popular Short Inspirational Quotes of All Time

According to Goodreads’ nearly 100 million members, these are the 34 most popular quotes that fit our criteria. The top quote has 166,000+ votes, and it goes down from there. Moving along the list, I decided to include all quotes down to 40,000 votes.

Here go the 34 most popular short but inspiring quotes of all time:

1. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Anonymous

2. “So many books, so little time.” ― Frank Zappa

3. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” ― Bernard M. Baruch

4. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” ― Dr. Seuss

5. “You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.” — Joe E. Lewis

6. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

7. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ― Robert Frost

8. “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” ― J.K. Rowling

9. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” ― Anonymous

10. “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.” ― Anonymous

11. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ― Elbert Hubbard

12. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” ― Oscar Wilde

13. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ― Percy Colson

14. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

15. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

16. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” ― Stephen Chbosky

17. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

18. “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” ― Narcotics Anonymous

19. “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” ― Andre Gide

20. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr

21. “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ― J.K. Rowling

22. “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” ― Marilyn Monroe

23. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein

24. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” ― J.K. Rowling

25. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ― Oscar Wilde

26. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman

27. “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare

28. “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” ― Maurice Switzer

29. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” ― Mark Twain

30. “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” ― Allen Saunders

31. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.” ― Bill Keane

32. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ― Thomas A. Edison

33. “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

34. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” ― Mark Twain

32 Inspiring Quotes for Motivation

If you’re looking for short quotes specifically for motivation — to run your errands, to start or finish an important project, to go work out at the gym — try the following 32 hard-hitters we’ve compiled from around the web:

1. “Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.” ― Roy T. Bennett

2. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” ― Zig Ziglar

3. “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

4. “Success is never final; failure is never fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Anonymous

5. “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.” — Confucius

6. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

7. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 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. “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” — Theodore Roosevelt

9. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — Adelaide Anne Procter

10. “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” — Jim Rohn

11. “Opportunity is often missed because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Anonymous

12. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker

13. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” — Les Brown

14. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.” — Jessie Potter

15. “It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.” — Tony Robbins

16. “Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.” — Michael Jordan

17. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” ― Oprah Winfrey

18. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” ― Marianne Williamson

19. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy

20. “What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.” ― Maya Angelou

21. “Death is being alive and not knowing it.” — Anonymous

22. “Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.” ― Zig Ziglar

23. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” — Anonymous

24. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart

25. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky

26. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” — George Addair

27. “There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.” — Conan O’Brien

28. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.” ― J.K. Rowling

29. “You drown not by falling into the river, but by staying submerged in it.” — Paulo Coelho

30. “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” ― Arnold Schwarzenegger

31. “You’re already in pain. You’re already hurt. Use it! Do something with it! Get a reward from it. Allow your pain to push you to greatness.” — Eric Thomas

32. “There’s no excuse to not be the hardest worker in the room, whatever it may be, your job, the gym, your relationship. Your name’s attached to it, and that has to mean more than anything.” — Greg Plitt

32 Inspiring Quotes About Success

Want some short, punchy quotes to motivate you to go after what you truly want out of life? Here are 32 brief but powerful quotes about persistence and finding success:

1. “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” ― Herbert Bayard Swope

2. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” ― Herman Melville

3. “Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” ― Roy T. Bennett

4. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” ― Truman Capote

5. “Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.” ― Salvador Dali

6. “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

7. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” — Anonymous

8. “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” — Coco Chanel

9. “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

10. “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” — Zig Ziglar

11. “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.” — Roger Staubach

12. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” ― Oliver Goldsmith

13. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” — Stephen R. Covey

14. “Some of the biggest failures I ever had were successes. A man has to try in order to grow, and try again. The point is that it’s the trying that does it, and not necessarily achieving what he is attempting to do.” — Pearl Bailey

15. “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” — Albert Einstein

16. “You may get to the very top of the ladder and then find it has not been leaning against the right wall.” — Allen Raine

17. “Success is failure turned inside out.” — Edgar A. Guest

18. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.” — Florence Nightingale

19. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Anonymous

20. “He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.” — Bessie A. Stanley

21. “Work hard in silence and let success make the noise.” — Anonymous

22. “Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close

23. “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” — Dale Carnegie

24. “Most men and women die intellectually at 25, but are not buried until 60.” — G. E. Marchand

25. “People of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” — Elinor Smith

26. “A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against not with the wind.” — John Neal

27. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs

28. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” — Sun Tzu

29. “If you hang out with chickens, you’re going to cluck, and if you hang out with eagles, you’re going to fly.” ― Steve Maraboli

30. “80 percent of success is showing up.” — Woody Allen

31. “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” — Francis Chan

32. “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” ― Robert T. Kiyosaki

32 Inspiring Quotes About Relationships

Did you just go through a breakup? Have you recently fallen in love? Are you going through a rough patch with a friend or family member? Perhaps, a tiny dose of new perspective will lead to a breakthrough.

Here are 32 short inspiring quotes about human relationships:

1. “They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buehner

2. “Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.” ― J.K. Rowling

3. “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” — Carl Jung

4. “For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” ― Stephanie Perkins

5. “The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” ― Ernest Hemingway

6. “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” — Donald Miller

7. “There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.” ― Shmuley Boteach

8. “Friendship isn’t a big thing—it’s a million little things.” — Paulo Coelho

9. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

10. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” ― Jane Austen

11. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” ― Helen Keller

12. “Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.” ― Sarah Dessen

13. “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” ― C.S. Lewis

14. “You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ― A.A. Milne

15. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

16. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Dean Koontz

17. “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’” — Arnold Zack

18. “I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.” — Anonymous

19. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

20. “Love is like the wind — you can’t see it but you can feel it.” ― Nicholas Sparks

21. “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” ― Jodi Picoult

22. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson

23. “One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.” ― Paulo Coelho

24. “Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.” — Booker T. Washington

25. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs

26. “A wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.” — Aristotle

27. “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

28. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ― Leo Tolstoy

29. “When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching — they are your family.” ― Jim Butcher

30. “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.” ― Walt Whitman

31. “A real friend walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” — Anonymous

32. “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 Watts

16 Short Inspiring Quotes From the People in My Life

Okay, inspiring quotes from famous people are great, but what about the people we know? If we look and listen, there’s plenty of inspiration to be found right inside our homes, offices, and when spending time with friends and loved ones.

To that end, here are 16 short quotes from the people in my life that continue to inspire me throughout the years. For more, see here.

1. “What you don’t have in your head, you gotta have in your legs.” — My grandma, about forgetting one’s keys

2. “Nonsense.” — My uncle, about everything that wasn’t one of his priorities

3. “My boss used to say: ‘I’ve been producing ‘navy blue’ for 40 years!’ That’s when I knew I needed to get out of there.” — My dad about his first job at a chemical company making dyes

4. “If you can go to bed late, you can also get up early.” — My grandma, on laziness

5. “Tomorrow’s another day.” — My mom, whenever I was sick, down, broken, or defeated

6. “All you have to do to get the career you want is to figure out the building blocks it requires, then chain them together.” — My other uncle, senior partner at a big consulting firm

7. “Everyone should know how to set up and run a blog.” — My statistics professor in the US, right before making the entire class do just that.

8. “We learn for life, not for school.” — A friend from college, trying to alleviate the pain of 12-hour study sessions

9. “The days when we least want to exercise are the days we need it the most.” — A former roommate

10. “Everything happens for a reason.” — An ex-girlfriend

11. “Whatever money can solve, let it.” — My girlfriend

12. “I like studying in big libraries. I need room to think.” — Another roommate

13. “Take all the time you need.” — My girlfriend, whenever she has to wait for me

14. “I would not say a word — so I don’t accidentally change anything.” — Bill Gates, about what he’d tell his 20-year-old self on the phone (while giving a talk at my college)

15. “Sympathy is free, envy must be earned.” — My mom, whenever someone attacks me because I’m different in any way, shape, or form

16. “There were always moments when one or the other could have left, but what better thing might follow?” — My grandma, about how she managed to stay married for almost 60 years

32 Short Inspiring Quotes That Made a Big Impact on Me

Some lines hit us harder than others, and it’s often a matter of “right place, right time.” Chances are, a movie you watch right after a tragic breakup will leave a more lasting impression than one you casually run in the background on a Tuesday while boiling your pasta. That’s why our personal selection of quotes that affected us in a big way is highly subjective — but if we share our collections, perhaps for someone else, an idea or two will also come in the right place and at the right time.

Here are 32 short, deep quotes from books I’ve read, movies I’ve watched, TED talks I’ve listened to, and more:

1. “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

2. “Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” — Alfred to Batman

3. “You should think of the word depressed as ‘deep rest.’ Deep. Rest. Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play.” — Jim Carrey

4. “Sometimes things have to fall apart to make way for better things.” — Ted Mosby

5. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” — Paulo Coelho

6. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” — Sir Ken Robinson

7. “Always the stairs, never the escalator.” — Casey Neistat

8. “Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca

9. “Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once we grow up.” — Picasso

10. “If more people valued home above gold, this world would be a merrier place.” — Thorin Oakenshield

11. “Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong.” — Peter Drucker

12. “If you have to take a vacation, never come back.” — Joel Salatin

13. “The safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want.” — Charlie Munger

14. “The moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.” — Hal Elrod

15. “The person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit.” — Jerry Weintraub

16. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Benjamin Franklin

17. “You have to make yourself the only person who controls your dreams.” — James Altucher

18. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs

19. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” — Eldridge Cleaver

20. “One is greater than zero.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

21. “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” — Steven Pressfield

22. “You must believe in yourself enough to be the person now that others will remember later.” — Greg Plitt

23. “No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.” — James Altucher

24. “Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.” — Steve Jobs

25. “They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun.” — Jor-El (Superman’s Dad)

26. “Death is what gives life meaning.” — The Ancient One (Dr. Strange)

27. “Being an entrepreneur is mostly about trusting in your ability to figure it out.” — James Clear

28. “Don’t be what they made you.” — Wolverine

29. “Your move, chief.” — Robin Williams

30. “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman

31. “Whatever people say, there is right, there is wrong. There is nothing in between.” — Hercule Poirot

32. “Anger is a hot coal you’re holding, waiting to throw it at somebody.” — Zen proverb

28 Short Inspiring Quotes From My Own Writing

You might not know this, but, next to running Four Minute Books, I’m a writer. I’ve been writing almost daily for over eight years, and since 2022, I also publish a free daily blog. In 2018, I compiled some of the best life lessons I’ve learned thanks to writing.

If you want to see them all, you can ready my post “Everything I Know Is True,” but here are the most inspiring ones:

1. “The only person you’ll spend the rest of your life with is you.” — Niklas Göke

2. “If you run out of kind words for yourself, stop talking.” — Niklas Göke

3. “The truth about ourselves is what we choose to believe.” — Niklas Göke

4. “Freedom is always internal.” — Niklas Göke

5. “Having a choice matters more than whatever choice you make.” — Niklas Göke

6. “We should believe more in what we create and less in what we emulate.” — Niklas Göke

7. “We can’t choose what we’re raised to value, but we can choose to change.” — Niklas Göke

8. “What we learn alone is what we carry into our interactions with others.” — Niklas Göke

9. “Comparison is not just the death of joy, it is also the birth of misery.” — Niklas Göke

10. “It’s better to be curious than judgmental, and impossible to be both at once.” — Niklas Göke

11. “Study the failures of those around you, not the wins of those far away.” — Niklas Göke

12. “Changing your perspective is hard, but let it always be your first try.” — Niklas Göke

13. “Aging won’t free you from stupidity. Only learning will.” — Niklas Göke

14. “A mistake is only as valuable as the time you spend learning from it.” — Niklas Göke

15. “Every lesson in life comes at the expense of unlearning another.” — Niklas Göke

16. “The more you listen, the smarter you get. Listening leads to learning.
The smarter you get, the more you listen. Learning leads to humility.” — Niklas Göke

17. “You don’t need an identity to have a life.” — Niklas Göke

18. “The only way to stay true to who you are is to change every day.” — Niklas Göke

19. “Reality consists of subjects and verbs. We supply all the adjectives.” — Niklas Göke

20. “The only place where we can truly live is the present. It all happens here.” — Niklas Göke

21. “Peace of mind relies on having faith in present-you.” — Niklas Göke

22. “When the outside world is loud, be quiet inside.” — Niklas Göke

23. “Your work should reflect who you are, not what you want your life to be.” — Niklas Göke

24. “The easiest way to attract what you desire is to deserve what you want.” — Niklas Göke

25. “Wanting what makes you happy requires wanting the right things.” — Niklas Göke

26. “Half of happiness is learning to love everything you don’t have.” — Niklas Göke

27. “If you travel because you’re unhappy, you’ll never reach your destination.” — Niklas Göke

28. “What you do in your one life will be everything you ever do.” — Niklas Göke

24 Short Inspiring Quotes About Leaving Your Comfort Zone

My very first article was about leaving your comfort zone. Naturally, I have a soft spot for that topic. When I couldn’t find a list of quotes specifically mentioning “the comfort zone” as a concept, I made one. Here are some of the best lines I found. May they push you to challenge yourself and try something new:

1. “A comfort zone is a beautiful place – but nothing ever grows there.” — Anonymous

2. “Comfort is the enemy of achievement.” — Farrah Gray

3. “Great things never came from comfort zones.” — Anonymous

4. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Neale Donald Walsh

5. “A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what a ship is built for.” — John Augustus Shedd

6. “Outside of the comfort zone is where the magic happens.” — Anonymous

7. “A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” — Lao-Tzu

8. “As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.” — Robin S. Sharma

9. “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.” — Eckhart Tolle

10. “Great people do things before they’re ready.” — Amy Poehler

11. “Comfort zones are plush lined coffins. When you stay in your plush lined coffin, you die.” — Stan Dale

12. “Everything you desire is always just outside your comfort zone. If it wasn’t, you would already possess it, would you not?” — Chris Murray

13. “To the degree we’re not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.” — Peter McWilliams

14. “As long as you’re uncomfortable, it means you’re growing.” — Ashton Kutcher

15. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

16. “It’s good to feel stupid sometimes and do things that are out of your comfort zone.” — Mary-Louise Parker

17. “I have stepped outside my comfort zone enough to know that, yes, the world does fall apart, but not in the way that you fear.” — Tan Le

18. “It’s when you begin to think about going to your dream that your dream is always outside of your comfort zone. It’s always beyond what you’ve ever done.” — Bruce Wilkinson

19. “In the long run, our comfort zone becomes our uncomfortable zone.” — Charles F. Glassman

20. “When you go out of your comfort zone and it works, there’s nothing more satisfying.” — Kristen Wiig

21. “If your circle doesn’t challenge you to grow beyond your comfort zone, then you are definitely in the wrong circle.” — Edmond Mbiaka

22. “So when you feel this time approaching, and your comfort zone’s in view. Stop and think about what you’re feeling, and see if what you’re feeling is true.” — Julie Hebert

23. “To be outstanding – get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” — Alrik Koudenburg

24. “Find your uncomfortzone.” — Anonymous

28 Short Quotes From Naval Ravikant

One of my favorite sources of wisdom is the investor, philosopher, and grade-A thinker Naval Ravikant. I’ve been following him for years, and I highly recommend a book of his ideas compiled by Eric Jorgenson, called The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Here are 28 of his best quotes from Twitter, the book, and his interviews:

1. “Life is a single player game.” — Naval Ravikant

2. “If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100% swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.” — Naval Ravikant

3. “My old definition was ‘freedom to’, freedom to do anything I want. Now I would say that the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s ‘freedom from.’” — Naval Ravikant

4. “Happiness to me is mainly not suffering, not desiring, not thinking too much about the future or the past, really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, the way it is.” — Naval Ravikant

5. “Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.” — Naval Ravikant

6. “It’s very hard to be successful in business if you’re trying to live a well-rounded life.” — Naval Ravikant

7. “To win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. Avoid status games. They make you into an angry, combative person.” — Naval Ravikant

8. “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” — Naval Ravikant

9. “A great goal in life would be to not have to be in a given place at a given time.” — Naval Ravikant

10. “Whenever you can in life, if you have the choice, optimize for independence rather than optimize for pay.” — Naval Ravikant

11. “The smartest and the most successful people I know started out as losers.” — Naval Ravikant

12. “All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.” — Naval Ravikant

13. “Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgement.” — Naval Ravikant

14. “Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.” — Naval Ravikant

15. “Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.” — Naval Ravikant

16. “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.” — Naval Ravikant

17. “Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.” — Naval Ravikant

18. “The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.” — Naval Ravikant

19. “The quality of your mind is the quality of your life.” — Naval Ravikant

20. “The more neatly you fit into society, the less free you actually are.” — Naval Ravikant

21. “You’re spending time to save money when you should be spending money to save time.” — Naval Ravikant

22. “If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.” — Naval Ravikant

23. “Read the books they want to ban.” — Naval Ravikant

24. “The secret to a happy relationship is two happy people.” — Naval Ravikant

25. “If you aren’t willing to be mocked, you’ll never be able to lead.” — Naval Ravikant

26. “People think they can’t change themselves, but they can. People think they can change others, but they can’t.” — Naval Ravikant

27. “Your success in life depends on your ability to make good decisions. Your happiness depends on your ability to not care about the outcomes.” — Naval Ravikant

28. “It takes time to develop your gut, but once it’s developed, don’t listen to anything else.” — Naval Ravikant

32 Short Quotes From Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a legend in the world of marketing, but his talks, daily blog, and some 20+ bestsellers go way beyond brilliant branding and sales advice. He is one of few people I consider a true role model, from his ethics to his attitude to his thinking. My #1 book recommendation is The Dip. Here are some of his best lines:

1. “You have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.” — Seth Godin

2. “The long way is the shortcut.” — Seth Godin

3. “In many mature markets, it takes 10,000 hours of preparation to win because most people give up after 5,000 hours. That’s the only magic thing about 10k… it’s a hard number to reach, so most people bail.” — Seth Godin

4. “You don’t win an Olympic gold medal with a few weeks of intensive training. […] Every great company, every great brand, and every great career has been built in exactly the same way: bit by bit, step by step, little by little.” — Seth Godin

5. “Writer’s block is a myth, a recent invention, a cultural malady. […] It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, buys it, sponsors it or shares it. It matters that you show up.” — Seth Godin

6. “Everyone who can [read] this has more power than they think they do. The question is, what are you going to do with that power?” — Seth Godin

7. “Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.” — Seth Godin

8. “The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.” ― Seth Godin

9. “The job is not the work. The job is what you do when you are told what to do. Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it.” — Seth Godin

10. “All anxiety is is experiencing failure in advance.” — Seth Godin

11. “A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.” ― Seth Godin

12. “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” ― Seth Godin

13. “Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.” ― Seth Godin

14. “You’re astonishing. How dare you waste it.” ― Seth Godin

15. “Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well-rounded is the secret to success.” ― Seth Godin

16. “The Dip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment.” ― Seth Godin

17. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” ― Seth Godin

18. “The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.” ― Seth Godin

19. “Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin

20. “Life is like skiing. The goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.” — Seth Godin

21. “Go ahead, do something impossible.” — Seth Godin

22. “If failure is not an option, then neither is success.” — Seth Godin

23. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” — Seth Godin

24. “The reason they want you to fit in is that once you do, then they can ignore you.” — Seth Godin

25. “You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless.” — Seth Godin

26. “The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.” — Seth Godin

27. “The key to success is to find a way to stand out – to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins.” — Seth Godin

28. “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.” — Seth Godin

29. “You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.” — Seth Godin

30. “You don’t have to settle. It’s a choice you get to make every day.” — Seth Godin

31. “It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.” — Seth Godin

32. “The moment you talk about work/life balance you already missed the balance. Work and life overlap.” — Seth Godin

16 Short Quotes From Ryan Holiday

When it comes to philosophy and overall perspective on life, Ryan Holiday is my go-to guy. A former marketer turned writer, he singlehandedly brought about a resurgence of Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that can help us live a good life. If you want to know more, check out our list of Stoic quotes, but here are some of my favorite lines from Ryan’s books:

1. “When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?” — Ryan Holiday

2. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” — Ryan Holiday

3. “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.” — Ryan Holiday

4. “Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.” — Ryan Holiday

5. “People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.” — Ryan Holiday

6. “By seeing each day and each situation as a kind of training exercise, the stakes suddenly become a lot lower. The way you interpret your own mistakes and the mistakes of others is suddenly a lot more generous.” — Ryan Holiday

7. “Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections.” — Ryan Holiday

8. “There is no better definition of a Stoic: to have but not want, to enjoy without needing.” — Ryan Holiday

9. “There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.” — Ryan Holiday

10. “It doesn’t matter if you’re tired or well-rested. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard or easy. If you’re cold or warm. What counts, whether you’re a kid or a king or anything in between, is that you do the right thing.” — Ryan Holiday

11. “You don’t have to always be amazing. You do always have to show up. What matters is sticking around for the next at bat.” — Ryan Holiday

12. “Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.” ― Ryan Holiday

13. “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.” ― Ryan Holiday

14. “We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.” ― Ryan Holiday

15. “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.” — Ryan Holiday

16. “The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.” — Ryan Holiday

16 Short Quotes From Brené Brown

Brené Brown is the world’s #1 researcher on shame, vulnerability, and courage. Her books have sold millions of copies and encourage thousands of people each day to be their best selves. If you want to live more courageously, be a true team player, and allow yourself to be honest and real, Brené is one of the best sources for inspiration.

Here are 16 of my favorite quotes of hers. For more, go here.

1. “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” — Brené Brown

2. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” — Brené Brown

3. “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” — Brené Brown

4. “Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” — Brené Brown

5. “If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!” — Brené Brown

6. “Compassion is not a virtue — it is a commitment. It’s not something we have or don’t have — it’s something we choose to practice.” — Brené Brown

7. “When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” — Brené Brown

8. “The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” — Brené Brown

9. “Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.” — Brené Brown

10. “Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.” — Brené Brown

11. “What we know matters but who we are matters more.” — Brené Brown

12. “Numb the dark and you numb the light.” — Brené Brown

13. “Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.” — Brené Brown

14. “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.” — Brené Brown

15. “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” — Brené Brown

16. “At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized.” — Brené Brown

24 Motivational Quotes From J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

We can find inspiration well beyond the realm of reality, and personally, little lights my inner fire so strongly as a good novel. While there are countless good fiction titles, Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling might be the most famous book series of the 21st century, and it is packed with heartwarming lines. Whether you’re a diehard Harry Potter fan like me or “merely a muggle,” I’m sure you’ll find at least some of the following quotes inspiring. Especially Dumbledore is a fountain of wisdom that keeps on giving.

Here are 24 short motivational quotes from Harry Potter, some of which have received nearly 100,000 likes on Goodreads:

1. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” — J.K. Rowling

2. “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” — J.K. Rowling

3. “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.” ― J.K. Rowling

4. “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ― J.K. Rowling

5. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” ― J.K. Rowling

6. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” ― J.K. Rowling

7. “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” ― J.K. Rowling

8. “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” ― J.K. Rowling

9. “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.” ― J.K. Rowling

10. “The truth — it is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” ― J.K. Rowling

11. “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.” ― J.K. Rowling

12. “We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.” ― J.K. Rowling

13. “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.” ― J.K. Rowling

14. “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” ― J.K. Rowling

15. “You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” — J.K. Rowling

16. “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.” ― J.K. Rowling

17. “Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” ― J.K. Rowling

18. “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” ― J.K. Rowling

19. “People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” ― J.K. Rowling

20. “Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.” ― J.K. Rowling

21. “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.” ― J.K. Rowling

22. “It is my belief… that the truth is generally preferable to lies.” ― J.K. Rowling

23. “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” ― J.K. Rowling

24. “Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.” ― J.K. Rowling

12 Motivational Quotes From Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games

Part dystopian sci-fi fantasy, part dramatic romance, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is another excellent series of books (and accompanying movies) to get inspired by. It is markedly darker than Harry Potter but still full of hope and empowering ideas. When I first picked up these books, I could not put them down.

Here are 12 of my favorite lines from the series to help you keep going when the going gets tough:

1. “You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.” ― Suzanne Collins

2. “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever.” ― Suzanne Collins

3. “I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.” ― Suzanne Collins

4. “It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.” ― Suzanne Collins

5. “Destroying things is much easier than making them.” ― Suzanne Collins

6. “What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses.” ― Suzanne Collins

7. “Some walks you have to take alone.” ― Suzanne Collins

8. “Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.” ― Suzanne Collins

9. “At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.” ― Suzanne Collins

10. “Here’s some advice: Stay alive.” ― Suzanne Collins

11. “While you live, the revolution lives.” ― Suzanne Collins

12. “Aim higher in case you fall short.” ― Suzanne Collins

20 Motivational Quotes From Ancient Stoic Philosophers

Some of my biggest heroes have long passed away, and that includes the early Stoic philosophers people like Ryan Holiday now write about. It’s always good to get an up to date take on any topic, but if you truly want to understand something, you’ll also have to go back to its source. In the case of early proponents of Stoicism, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, many of their ideas are as powerful today as they were 2,000 years ago. For a primer on Stoicism, see here.

Here are 20 short but thought-provoking quotes from the first Stoics. You can find more here.

1. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

2. “Men are disturbed not by things but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” — Epictetus

3. “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

4. “You could not step twice into the same river.” — Heraclitus

5. “We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we speak.” — Zeno of Citium

6. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” ― Marcus Aurelius

7. “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

8. “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” — Seneca

9. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” ― Marcus Aurelius

10. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” ― Marcus Aurelius

11. “We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” — Seneca

12. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.” — Marcus Aurelius

13. “Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca

14. “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.” — Marcus Aurelius

15. “Freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.” — Epictetus

16. “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” — Seneca

17. “Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well.” — Marcus Aurelius

18. “Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.” — Cleanthes

19. “Let your desires be ruled by reason.” — Cicero

20. “I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.” — Cato the Younger

20 Motivational Quotes From Bruce Lee

Another one of my heroes who unfortunately no longer walks among us is Bruce Lee. The legendary kung fu master and Hollywood actor is the most influential martial artist in history. What not many people know is that his impact goes well beyond his movies and combat instructions. Lee was a philosopher at heart, and he wrote down many of his thoughts in his private journals and notes. Thankfully, a large portion of them has been published since his passing, and many of his ideas are well worth studying.

Here are 20 of the most inspiring, short but deep quotes from Bruce Lee. For more, see our full list here.

1. “Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water.” — Bruce Lee

2. “You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Be water, my friend.” — Bruce Lee

3. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” — Bruce Lee

4. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” — Bruce Lee

5. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” — Bruce Lee

6. “Be happy, but never satisfied.” — Bruce Lee

7. “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” — Bruce Lee

8. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” — Bruce Lee

9. “A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.” — Bruce Lee

10. “To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals is courtesy; to inferiors is nobleness; and to all, safety!” — Bruce Lee

11. “An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding.” — Bruce Lee

12. “The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly, but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows.” — Bruce Lee

13. “Most people can talk without listening. Very few can listen without talking.” — Bruce Lee

14. “We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate.” — Bruce Lee

15. “To accept defeat — to learn to die — is to be liberated from it.” — Bruce Lee

16. “A fat belly cannot believe that such a thing as hunger exists.” — Bruce Lee

17. “You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.” — Bruce Lee

18. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” — Bruce Lee

19. “It is the life of perfection which seems to be incomplete, and of fullness which seems to be empty.” — Bruce Lee

20. “Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.” — Bruce Lee

16 Motivational Quotes From Yoda

Where some of idols were people I never had the chance to meet, others are folks who never existed at all. As with a good book or movie, that does not make them any less inspiring. For me, one of those people is Yoda, the famous Jedi master from Star Wars. He talks in a funny way, but his little quips of wisdom are hard to debate and even harder to ignore.

Here are master Yoda’s 16 best brief but refreshing lines. For more, see here.

1. “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

2. “Patience you must have, my young Padawan.” — Yoda

3. “Great warrior. Hmm. Wars not make one great.” — Yoda

4. “You must unlearn what you have learned.” — Yoda

5. “The greatest teacher, failure is.” — Yoda

6. “Death is a natural part of life.” — Yoda

7. “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” — Yoda

8. “Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.” — Yoda

9. “If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are, a different game you should play.” — Yoda

10. “Named must your fear be, before banish it you can.” — Yoda

11. “Smaller in number are we, but larger in mind.” — Yoda

12. “Your path you must decide.” — Yoda

13. “To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.” — Yoda

14. “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” — Yoda

15. “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?” — Yoda

16. “A challenge lifelong it is, not to bend fear into anger.” — Yoda

100 Short Inspirational Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

If you want to post any of the above quotes to social media, you can do so with our “highlight and share” feature. That said, we also made a whopping 100 custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

We even tried to pick appropriate background images that fit with the theme of each quote or show the person who said it. Feel free to scroll through, save, screenshot, use them as phone wallpapers, and share as many as you like. Happy sharing!

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Methodology & Attribution

I’m not a hardcore academic, but I did get a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Management & Technology. As such, I care about proper sources, organized footnotes, and well-structured information. Therefore, our list of short motivational quotes follows a strict set of rules:

Each quote must be short (duh!). No more than 2-3 lines or sentences. Walls of text are forbidden. We want powerful, poignant insights!
Each quote must be uplifting (duh again). No jokes or downers! Every quote must somehow encourage us to do better, lead by example, and be a force for good in the world. Even if it contains some tough love, it should ultimately make us want to improve rather than retreat.
Each sub-section of quotes must have a focused, verifiable theme. When we tell you that “these are the most popular quotes,” there must be some metric to measure popularity by. When we say, “these are quotes about success,” each line must actually talk about achievement. And when we say, “these are the best lines from Brené Brown,” then you can rest assured we have tried our best to verify that each sentence actually came out of Brené Brown’s mouth or, well, pen. You’ll find more detail on each section’s theme at the top of that section.

Finally, since I am a writer and this website is all about books, you won’t be surprised to find that many of the quotes on this list are from non-fiction books, writers, and some of history’s greatest novels.

You will also notice that some of the quotes you know and love are attributed to other people than the ones you are used to. That’s because I went out and tried to verify their sources, and, surprise surprise, the internet is full of misinformation. Thankfully, websites like Wikiquote and Quote Investigator help clear up a great deal of it, and I’ve turned to them countless times while researching this list.

As a good rule of thumb, some especially popular individuals who constantly get quotes ascribed to them that they never said are: Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Maya Angelou. Whenever you see a quote that mentions them, especially one that doesn’t seem to fit into the language of their time, I encourage you to be skeptical and do your own research.

Conclusion

Phew! Almost exactly 10,000 words later (9,942, so close!), our list of short inspirational quotes is at its end. What are your thoughts? Did you find the kind of encouragement you were looking for? What are we missing? We’d love to hear how we can improve this list and make it even better. Ping us on Twitter, and if you’ve found even one good line in this massive compendium, we’d greatly appreciate a share.

May your inspiration never run out, and if it does, you know where to find some 😉

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 44 Best & Most Important Stoic Quotes From Seneca, Marcus Aurelius & Co.

The first time I ever heard about Stoicism was when my parents used a German expression called “stoische Ruhe” — Stoic calm. The phrase usually describes someone who seems to be unfazed in the face of adversity. “With Stoic calm, he accepted his plight,” we might say. Someone who has Stoic calm is not invincible but unshakeable, and if you’re looking to develop this and other Stoic qualities, what better place to start than a selection of the best Stoic quotes? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

In this organized list, you’ll discover the best ideas from 10 early Stoic philosophers. You’ll also learn which 10 Stoic quotes are the most popular, based on reader votes. Furthermore, we’ll look at 10 popular quotes from modern-day Stoics, and I’ll share my 14 personal favorites as well, for a total of 44 quotes about Stoicism! Finally, I’ll show you where you can find more Stoic quotes, share some cool, custom images for posting your favorites to social media, and provide a little background on what Stoicism is and why this 2,300-year-old philosophy is still worth studying today.

Want a list of the 7 best philosophy books of all time to learn more about Stoicism straight from the horse’s mouth? Download our free PDF, print it, and learn more about this timeless philosophy that can help us live and think better. Or save it for later and read it whenever you want!

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The easiest way to navigate this list is to use the table of contents below. You can jump to whichever section seems most interesting with a single tap! If you want to share any quote on this list, simply highlight it and several sharing options will appear. Alternatively, you can skip to the section with premade images towards the end. Oh, and you’ll find the sources for each quote at the end of every section as well.

As four-time weightlifting world champion and Tim Ferriss’s personal trainer Jerzy Gregorek once said: “I can’t imagine any life more beautiful than that of a Stoic.” Let’s discover why in some of the best quotes from the greatest Stoic philosophers!

Top 10 Stoic Quotes From the Most Famous Stoic Philosophers

If you want to grasp the most important Stoic ideas — self-reflection, restraint, taking action, and acceptance — in a nutshell, you could do worse than start with these lines from 10 quintessential Stoics. We’ve sorted them chronologically based on when their originators lived.

Technically, Heraclitus, who lived around 500 BC, wasn’t a Stoic, but his ideas greatly influenced all subsequent philosophers. Zeno, born 334 BC, is considered the founder of Stoicism, and Marcus Aurelius can be deemed the last great Stoic before the decline of the Roman Empire. Here are some of their and other famous Stoics’ best thoughts:

1. “You could not step twice into the same river.” — Heraclitus

2. “We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we speak.” — Zeno of Citium

3. “Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.” — Cleanthes

4. “There could be no justice, unless there were also injustice; no courage, unless there were cowardice; no truth, unless there were falsehood.” — Chrysippus

5. “Let your desires be ruled by reason.” — Cicero

6. “I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.” — Cato the Younger

7. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

8. “If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.” — Musonius Rufus

9. “Men are disturbed not by things but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” — Epictetus

10. “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

Sources

As quoted by Plato.
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius.
From the same book by Diogenes Laërtius as #2.
Via Daily Stoic.
From his book De Officiis (On Duties).
As described by Plutarch.
From his Moral Letters to Lucilius (#13).
Via Daily Stoic.
As found in his Enchiridion.
From Meditations, supposedly book VIII, but it might be from an older translation or an amalgamation of lines from previous, other versions of the book.

The 10 Most Popular Stoic Quotes

Okay, so much for the most important quotes from Stoics, but what about the most popular ones? Which ones resonate the most with people? On Goodreads, over 125 million members can vote on their favorite lines from books and authors. Below, we’ve compiled the ten most-voted lines from three of the most well-known Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus (mainly because their writings have partially survived to this day) and one other philosopher, Epicurus.

A few caveats: Epicurus founded his own school of thought, Epicureanism, and though it is often depicted as a philosophy contrary to Stoicism, the two approaches actually have a lot in common. Hence, some of his Stoic-leaning ideas are worth including. Each quote has received over 1,000 likes on Goodreads, some up to 5,000. Any line that would be a double mention from above was excluded, and so was any quote we couldn’t at least somewhat verify as correctly attributed.

That said, here we go. These are the 10 most popular Stoic quotes, according to readers on Goodreads:

1. “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius

2. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” ― Marcus Aurelius

3. “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

4. “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” — Seneca

5. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” ― Marcus Aurelius

6. “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

7. “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 content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” — Seneca

8. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” ― Marcus Aurelius

9. “The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” ― Marcus Aurelius

10. “If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.’” ― Epictetus

Sources

From Meditations.
From Meditations.
Via the Vatican Sayings, a collection preserved by the church from a 14th-century manuscript.
From Moral Letters (#78).
From Meditations.
From Meditations.
From De Vita Beata (On the Happy Life).
From Meditations.
From Meditations.
From the Enchiridion.

10 Inspiring Quotes From Modern-Day Stoics

Around 600 years after its inception, Stoicism got lost in the sands of time. For nearly 2,000 years, the philosophy and its scarce literary remnants were condemned to obscurity. Sitting in church archives and private collections, Stoic ideas were shunned in public by Christians and other religions alike, perhaps practiced in private by few.

It is only in the second half of the 20th century that Stoicism found renewed interest, thanks in part to a book by an academic, Problems in Stoicism. The second party to be credited is Albert Ellis, a psychologist who partially relied on Stoic ideas to develop the foundations of cognitive behavioral theory, a now popular approach to treating various cognitive disorders, including anxiety and depression.

As of the 21st century, other prominent figures have taken over the reins, most notably Ryan Holiday, who has been shepherding and popularizing Stoicism through a series of over ten books which have sold over five million copies to date.

Here are 10 inspiring lines from modern-day Stoics to show you how this philosophy can be interpreted and of help to us today:

1. “Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.” ― Ryan Holiday

2. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

3. “People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” ― Timothy Ferriss

4. “As a Stoic, I must despise injury, or, rather, I must not feel it, must not be affected by it so that it cannot violate the freedom of my soul…” ― Alexandra David-Néel

5. “Our happiness is not to be found in the judgments of others or in things outside of our control.” — Arianna Huffington

6. “Having to fight for the thing you want doesn’t mean you deserve it any less.” ― Anna Kendrick

7. “Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.” ― Randy Pausch

8. “We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

9. “A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.” — Nassim Taleb

10. “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” — Jerzy Gregorek

Sources

From Ego Is the Enemy.
The serenity prayer is a widely known and cited affirmation.
From The 4-Hour Workweek.
Unverified. Since Néel was French, I tried finding a French translation but couldn’t.
From an interview on Daily Stoic.
From her biography, Scrappy Little Nobody. She also told The New York Times that she read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
From The Last Lecture.
From F for Philosopher.
From Antifragile.
As cited by Tim Ferriss in his TED talk.

My 14 Favorite Stoic Quotes From Seneca, Marcus Aurelius & Co.

I’m not an expert in Stoic philosophy, but I’ve been studying and enjoying Stoic wisdom for almost a decade. I read The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday several years in a row. Other books I’ve read, at least in parts, include Meditations, Letters from a Stoic, and On the Shortness of Life. I most enjoy the themes of using our time well, remembering our mortality, and focusing on what we can control. My perspective on Stoicism isn’t perfect, but here are 14 of my favorite quotes that I’ve curated over the years:

1. “We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it. Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca

2. “Let the mind be disciplined to understand and to endure its own lot; let it have the knowledge that there is nothing which fortune does not dare — that she has the same jurisdiction over empires as over emperors, the same power over cities as over the citizens who dwell therein. We must not cry out at any of these calamities. Into such a world have we entered, and under such laws do we live.” — Seneca

3. “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.” — Marcus Aurelius

4. “Make peace again with destiny, the destiny that unravels all ties: We are unequal at birth, but are equal in death.” — Seneca

5. “Given that all must die, it is better to die with distinction than to live long.” — Musonius Rufus

6. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.” — Marcus Aurelius

7. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.” — Seneca

8. “Nothing ought to be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all problems, and we should consider not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.” — Seneca

9. “Freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.” — Epictetus

10. “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” — Seneca

11. “Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well.” — Marcus Aurelius

12. “So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.” — Seneca

13. “You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.” — Marcus Aurelius

14. “It would be tedious to recount all the ways by which fate may come; but this one thing I know: all the works of mortal man have been doomed to mortality, and in the midst of things which have been destined to die, we live!” — Seneca

Sources

From De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life).
From Moral Letters (#91).
From Meditations.
From Moral Letters (#91)/Letters from a Stoic. I combined two different translations of the same section for pithiness.
From Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings.
From Meditations.
From De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life).
From Moral Letters (#91).
From Discourses.
From De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life).
From Meditations.
From De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life).
From Meditations.
From Moral Letters (#91).

More Stoic Quotes

Want more quotes about Stoicism? Besides our list of the best Marcus Aurelius quotes, at this point, you’re probably best off by picking up a book about the topic — and I have just the perfect one in mind: The Daily Stoic* by Ryan Holiday. Here’s a quick overview, along with some links to our summary of the book and an affiliate button to buy yourself a copy on Amazon.

Favorite Quote

“Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.” — Ryan Holiday

The Book in One Sentence

The Daily Stoic* is a year-long compilation of short, daily meditations from ancient Stoic philosophers like Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others, teaching you equanimity, resilience, and perseverance via the three Stoic disciplines of perception, action, and will.

Why should you read it?

I have read this book every year for five years in a row. It’s that good and, more importantly, that easy. A page a day. That’s all it takes. You have time to read a page a day. I know you do. Everyone does. This is also the best intro to Stoicism, I think. Mostly because it makes the topic so approachable. Plus, if you enjoy this one, it’s easy to pick up another Ryan Holiday book on the topic and continue exploring. I would recommend this book to anyone. It’s one of my all-time favorites.

Key Takeaways

Perception gives purpose to your thoughts, actions, and ultimately everything you do.
We can change the course of our life by actively choosing our actions instead of just reacting to our impulses.
Will is our internal power for perseverance, ready to give us hope when everything else fails.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books

_____

Buy on Amazon*

The Best Stoic Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

Beyond the “highlight and share” feature you can use to post any quote on this page, we’ve also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

For our image backgrounds, we decided to use busts, statues, and other art pieces created in hopes of capturing the likeness of some of these great minds. For some, we’ve decided to use photographs that fit the vibe of the quote. Fun fact: In 2020, I went to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which displays many a bust of famous Greeks and Romans, so some of the pictures I even took myself! Happy sharing!

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What Is Stoicism? Why Study This Ancient Philosophy?

Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that started some 2,300 years ago. According to legend, a merchant named Zeno suffered shipwreck when traveling from Cyprus to Piraeus. Fortunately, Zeno survived and reached Athens, where he took a few weeks to recover. One day, reading a book in a bookstore about a man named Socrates, Zeno felt so inspired, he asked the store owner where he could “find more men like him.” Since a well-known philosopher happened to walk by the store in that moment, the owner simply pointed at him. Zeno began studying under this philosopher, and he never returned to Cyprus. He later started his own school of philosophy. His common way of teaching was to hold public discussions in column-lined walkways — so-called stoas — and it is from there that Stoicism both spread and received its name. For more on the origin story of Stoicism, you can read this essay I wrote about Zeno’s story.

So much for the legend! But what about the theory? At its core, Stoicism is simple: It proposes that in order to live a happy life, all we have to do is live an ethical life. “Virtue” as in “moral goodness” is the highest value in Stoicism. If you live ethically, based on reason, and in line with nature, you will live a good life. That’s the idea.

Stoicism — like all philosophy, by the way — is a way of life. A worldview, if you will. Reading books and attending lectures is part of philosophy but not the point of it. The point is to live a good life, right here, right now. Do you have a rule you never break? Like being a non-smoker, for example? If so, that rule is part of your worldview, and any set of rules that helps you navigate everyday life can be considered your philosophy.

For the Stoics, that set of rules revolved around 4 attitudes and 3 disciplines. The disciplines help us practice the attitudes, and when we fully embody them, we live virtuously and, therefore, happily.

The 4 attitudes are:

Courage
Temperance (or self-discipline)
Justice
Wisdom

The 3 areas in which we must strive to practice these attitudes are:

Perception – the realm of our mind and how it processes what our senses take in
Action – the realm of reality in which we enact our decisions
Will – the realm of spirit, where our inner battles take place which affects how we act on what we experience

According to the Stoics, every day, we must study, practice, and train our minds, bodies, and spirits in these 3 disciplines. If we do, in time, we’ll become brave, disciplined, just, and wise — and those virtues, in turn, will ensure we live ethically and thus happily. “Eudaimonia,” the Stoics called it, “good-spiritedness.”

If you want to learn more about the theory of Stoicism and how to practice it, you can read my article “What Is Stoicism?“ in which I break down the entire philosophy in a single table. If you’re curious about the early Stoics and how they lived, I can recommend Ryan Holiday’s book Lives of the Stoics. Oh, and if you want to know what other philosophies are out there, check out our list of the best philosophy books.

Conclusion

That concludes our list of the best and most important Stoic quotes. What do you think? Did we pick a good selection? What kind of quotes from Stoics would you like to see more of? What’s your personal favorite? Let us know on Twitter, and we’ll be happy to update this list as we go along!

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 45 Best Brené Brown Quotes About Courage, Shame & Vulnerability

Brené Brown is the world’s #1 researcher on shame, vulnerability, and courage. An American professor, author, and podcaster born in 1965, Brené’s work first received widespread public attention after her 2010 TEDx talk on “the power of vulnerability.” If you’re looking for the best Brené Brown quotes from her books and talks, you’ve come to the right place!

Despite covering important topics that affect all of us, Brené’s research initially wasn’t super popular among her academic peers. After her TED talk went viral, however, it became clear that mainstream demand to learn more about shame and vulnerability was huge. That’s why Brené started publishing books, and so far, 6 of her 8 main titles have become major bestsellers.

Want a list of all of Brené’s books so you can better understand the quotes and their context? Download our free PDF, print it, and learn more about her work. Or save it for later and read it whenever you want!

Download PDF

To give you an overview of her work and best ideas, we’ve compiled the most popular Brené Brown quotes for you in an organized list. Besides the top 10 lines based on reader votes, we’ve also included the top 5 quotes from 7 of her books each, as well as some custom-designed images for you to share your favorites on social media.

Navigating this list is as easy as clicking on the section that most interests you in the table of contents below. To share any quote, just highlight the text, and sharing options will appear. You can also use the images towards the end of this list.

Now, without further ado, let’s jump into the best quotes from Brené Brown!

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Brené Brown

Would you like to know which Brené Brown quotes are the most popular? I did some analysis for you. Below, you’ll find the top 10 quotes from Brené, based on real reader votes on Goodreads. The highest-ranking quote has almost 2,000 likes, while #10 still has around 600 votes.

Here are Brené Brown’s 10 best quotes, according to readers:

1. “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

2. “Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them — we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”

3. “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”

4. “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”

5. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

6. “I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

7. “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

8. “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

9. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

10. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

The 35 Most Important Brené Brown Quotes

Since, as of right now, Brené has published 8 major books, most of them New York Times bestsellers, I thought it’d be cool to compile the top quotes from each book. Unfortunately, her first book, Women and Shame* (2004), is nearly impossible to find. So instead, I picked the top 5 quotes from her 7 most popular books in chronological order, also based on reader votes.

Therefore, in the below list, quotes 11-15 are the most popular quotes from I Thought It Was Just Me (2007), 16-20 are from The Gifts of Imperfection (2010), and so on. Within each group of 5 quotes, the first has received the most votes, and the number of likes goes down from there. I’ve excluded any quotes listed above already, most of which come from Daring Greatly, The Gifts of Imperfection, and some of Brené’s talks. I’ve also added some emphasis in the longer passages on the lines I think stand out the most.

Here are the top Brené Brown quotes from 7 of her bestselling books:

11. “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

12. “If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!”

13. “Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is ‘cor’ — the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’ Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences — good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as ‘ordinary courage.’”

14. “Compassion is not a virtue — it is a commitment. It’s not something we have or don’t have — it’s something we choose to practice.”

15. “The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are ‘those people.’ The truth is…we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being ‘those people’ — the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.”

16. “We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

17. “The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”

18. “Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.”

19. “Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.”

20. “Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

21. “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”

22. “When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”

23. “What we know matters but who we are matters more.”

24. “The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.”

25. “Numb the dark and you numb the light.”

26. “Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”

27. “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

28. “Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.”

29. “There are too many people today who instead of feeling hurt are acting out their hurt; instead of acknowledging pain, they’re inflicting pain on others. Rather than risking feeling disappointed, they’re choosing to live disappointed. Emotional stoicism is not badassery. Blustery posturing is not badassery. Swagger is not badassery. Perfection is about the furthest thing in the world from badassery.”

30. “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.”

31. “Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”

32. “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”

33. “People often silence themselves, or ‘agree to disagree’ without fully exploring the actual nature of the disagreement, for the sake of protecting a relationship and maintaining connection. But when we avoid certain conversations, and never fully learn how the other person feels about all of the issues, we sometimes end up making assumptions that not only perpetuate but deepen misunderstandings, and that can generate resentment.”

34. “You are only free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”

35. “But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.”

36. “I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”

37. “At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized.”

38. “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

39. “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in what you have to say.”

40. “Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.”

41. “Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”

42. “Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn’t lie to you. It learned more.”

43. “I am responsible for holding you accountable in a respectful and productive way. I’m not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability.”

44. “Good friends aren’t afraid of your light. They never blow out your flame and you don’t blow out theirs — even when it’s really bright and it makes you worry about your own flame.”

45. “People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power.”

More Brené Brown Quotes

At this point, the best way to find more good Brené Brown quotes is for you to read one of her books. While you can get a quick look at all of them on our Brené Brown books list, I’d recommend starting with Atlas of the Heart* (2021), her latest major work. Here’s a brief overview of the book, along with a link to our summary and an affiliate button to buy yourself a copy on Amazon.

Favorite Quote

“I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.” — Brené Brown

The Book in One Sentence

Atlas of the Heart* maps out a series of human emotions and their meaning and explores the psychology behind a human’s feelings and how they make up our lives and change our behaviors, and how to build meaningful connections by learning how to deal with them.

Why should you read it?

This book will help you understand your emotions and how they affect your behavior. It provides a series of definitions for our most common feelings. It also includes examples of situations in which they influence our decisions, thus making it easy for readers to understand where things go wrong and how they can quickly improve their approach to similar situations. If you want to learn more about your feelings and become better at navigating them, read this book.

Key Takeaways

Some of the most common toxic traits of all humans are comparison, internalizing anger, and disappointment.
To let go of negative emotions, you have to become vulnerable and allow meaningful connections to form.
Knowing our emotions makes it easier to turn them into strengths and do away with our weaknesses.

If you want to learn more, you can click below or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books

_____

Buy on Amazon*

The Best Brené Brown Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

If you want to post any of the above quotes to social media, you can do so with our “highlight and share” feature. That said, we also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

For the backgrounds, we used some images of Brené Brown speaking, from her media kit, and a mix of photos from Unsplash. Happy sharing!

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Conclusion

That’s it for our list of the 45 best and most popular quotes from Brené Brown. What do you think? Did we do a good job? Did we miss your favorite? Tag us on Twitter and let us know which other quote we should include, and we’ll update this list as we go.

Stay strong, and remember: Vulnerability is not weakness. It is courage.

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 44 Best & Most Important Quotes From Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, born April 26th in the year 121 AD, was a Roman emperor, Stoic philosopher, and one of history’s greatest leaders. Considered one of the “Five Good Emperors” of the last peaceful period of the Roman empire before its division in 395 AD and subsequent decline, Marcus is now most commonly remembered for his Meditations, a series of notes, thoughts, and journal entries about Stoic philosophy. If you’re looking for the best quotes from Marcus Aurelius about Stoicism and what it means to live a good life, welcome, you’ve found just the right place!

In this organized list, you’ll discover the 10 most popular Marcus Aurelius quotes, based on reader votes from Goodreads. We’ll also share Nik’s favorite lines from the great thinker, a little background on why philosophy is worth studying, and a whole bunch of custom-made images you can use to share your favorite quotes to social media.

You can easily navigate this list by using the below table of contents. Jump to whichever section interests you the most with a single click. If you want to share any quote on this list, simply highlight it, and several sharing options will appear. Alternatively, you can skip to the images section at the end of this list.

Now, let’s dive into the best quotes from Marcus Aurelius, and, in his first of many great lines, remember that “you always own the option of having no opinion.” “Things are not asking to be judged by you,” so take what you find useful, consume what you find inspiring, and ignore the rest!

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Marcus Aurelius

Wondering which Marcus Aurelius quotes are the most popular? I did the research for you. Below are the top 10 quotes from everyone’s favorite emperor, ranked based on votes from real readers on Goodreads. The top quote has around 5,200 votes. The last quote in the list still received over 1,600 likes.

Here are Marcus Aurelius’ 10 greatest hits:

1. “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

2. “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.”

3. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

4. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

Note: The second half of this quote is probably not from Marcus. The first half appears in Meditations when Marcus quotes Monimus, a Cynic philosopher. Still a great line!

5. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

6. “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.”

7. “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…”

8. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

9. “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

10. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

My 34 Favorite Marcus Aurelius Quotes

The hardest part of compiling quotes from someone who lived almost 2,000 years ago is making sure that what you find is what that person actually wrote or said. In Marcus’ case, we thankfully have the Meditations, his premier and only work, a journal of sorts, which consists of 12 volumes and survives to this day. Nearly all quotes we can attribute to Marcus with certainty go back to this text.

With a myriad of translations available from the original Greek, there is no shortage of clever lines from the man who, by all accounts, carried the burden of leadership well. I started reading the book a while ago. While I haven’t finished it in its entirety, I have also read The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday multiple times, and in that book, Ryan constantly quotes from Meditations.

Here are 34 of my favorite highlights from “the philosopher king,” all translations based on the one Holiday uses in The Daily Stoic, except #22:

11. “Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?”

12. “Don’t return to philosophy as a task-master, but as patients seek out relief in a treatment of sore eyes, or a dressing for a burn, or from an ointment. Regarding it this way, you’ll obey reason without putting it on display and rest easy in its care.”

13. “Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?”

14. “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.”

15. “It isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.”

16. “Wherever a person can live, there one can also live well.”

17. “You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.”

18. “Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend…”

19. “Whenever someone has done wrong by you, immediately consider what notion of good or evil they had in doing it. For when you see that, you’ll feel compassion, instead of astonishment or rage.”

20. “We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference.”

21. “The mind freed from passions is an impenetrable fortress—a person has no more secure place of refuge for all time.”

22. “Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”

23. “Try praying differently, and see what happens: Instead of asking for ‘a way to sleep with her,’ try asking for ‘a way to stop desiring to sleep with her.’ Instead of ‘a way to get rid of him,’ try asking for ‘a way to not crave his demise.’ Instead of ‘a way to not lose my child,’ try asking for ‘a way to lose my fear of it.’”

24. “That cucumber is bitter, so toss it out! There are thorns on the path, then keep away! Enough said. Why ponder the existence of nuisance?”

25. “When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me . . . and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.”

26. “Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging.”

27. “You have been formed of three parts—body, breath, and mind. Of these, the first two are yours insofar as they are only in your care. The third alone is truly yours.”

28. “If anyone can prove and show to me that I think and act in error, I will gladly change it—for I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed. The one who is harmed is the one who abides in deceit and ignorance.”

29. “Kindness is invincible, but only when it’s sincere, with no hypocrisy or faking. For what can even the most malicious person do if you keep showing kindness and, if given the chance, you gently point out where they went wrong—right as they are trying to harm you?”

30. “It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won’t tire and give up, if you aren’t busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed.”

31. “Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.”

32. “How easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self…”

33. “You must build up your life action by action, and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible—and no one can keep you from this.”

34. “If you find something very difficult to achieve yourself, don’t imagine it impossible — for anything possible and proper for another person can be achieved as easily by you.”

35. “The universe is change. Life is opinion.”

36. “Don’t be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can’t climb up without another soldier’s help?”

37. “While it’s true that someone can impede our actions, they can’t impede our intentions and our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its action into a means of achieving it. That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way.”

38. “Whatever anyone does or says, for my part I’m bound to the good. In the same way an emerald or gold or purple might always proclaim: ‘whatever anyone does or says, I must be what I am and show my true colors.’”

39. “That which isn’t good for the hive, isn’t good for the bee.”

40. “In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.”

41. “When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?”

42. “Receive without pride, let go without attachment.”

43. “Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”

44. “This is the mark of perfection of character—to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.”

More Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Want more original quotes from Marcus Aurelius? You could check out our list of the best Stoic quotes, which has some additional ones. The best way, however, by far, is to get a copy of the Meditations*. Here’s a short overview of the book, along with some links to our summary and an affiliate button to buy yourself a copy on Amazon.

Favorite Quote

“Put an end once for all to this discussion of what a good man should be, and be one.” — Marcus Aurelius

The Book in One Sentence

Meditations* is a collection of 12 books written by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who consistently journaled to remember his education in Stoic philosophy, and whose writings will teach you logic, faith, and self-discipline.

Why should you read it?

Most of us aspire to fame, wealth, power, and success, yet the few of us who actually attain these things often attest to the heavy weight of these things. Groomed to reign from a young age, Marcus was cast into the ultimate leadership role — ruling an empire that included a third of the world’s population at the time — and, unlike most, managed to carry this burden for almost two decades without giving up on morality and virtue. Whether you are aspiring to worldly success and want to maintain your integrity as you climb the ranks, already feel the heaviness of leadership, or are simply looking for daily reminders to persist against the sometimes adverse current of life, this book will help you find peace, clarity, and inspiration.

Key Takeaways

True “logic” doesn’t always make sense, but everything happens for a reason.
Life is too short to complain.
The only pain you suffer is the pain you create yourself.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books

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Buy on Amazon*

The Best Marcus Aurelius Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

Since Marcus Aurelius was a real person, we mostly stuck to pictures of the many busts and statues made in his honor, most famously the bronze statue depicting Marcus riding his horse, presumably after a great military victory. Happy sharing!

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Who Was Marcus Aurelius?

Marcus Aurelius was born in 121 AD to emperor Hadrian’s nephew, Marcus Annius Verus. The Roman Empire was at its height, totaling over 5 million square kilometers in land mass and nearly 60 million inhabitants, around a third of the world’s population.

Raised by his grandfather and mother after his father died when he was three, the young Marcus enjoyed wrestling and exercise. He also became a decent swordsman and received private tutoring at home. When Marcus was 17, Hadrian’s chosen heir died, and the emperor began planning for Marcus to eventually succeed him.

Marcus was adopted by his uncle, Antoninus Pius, who, in turn, was adopted by Hadrian. 23 years later, Marcus would be named one of only 15 emperors in Roman history, and one of only five “good ones” at that. In-between, he studied Latin, Greek, and philosophy extensively. He also held several political offices to prepare him for the role.

By the time Marcus became emperor in 161 AD, the Roman Empire was under attack from all sides, and Marcus successfully beat back threats from both the East and the West. Unusually, he also named his adoptive brother Lucius Verus co-emperor, a practice he hoped would become ritual and help re-establish the more democratic ruling style described in Plato’s The Republic.

Unfortunately, only five years into Marcus’ reign, what came to be known as “the Antonine Plague” broke out. The biggest pandemic witnessed by the empire, it would kill some five to ten million Romans over the next 15 years, ultimately also bringing Marcus to his deathbed in 180 AD.

Sadly, Marcus’ only surviving son Commodus, who succeeded him as emperor, wasn’t nearly as bent on being a good person as his father, and the decline of the Roman Empire only accelerated from there.

Of course, today, we most remember Marcus Aurelius for his Meditations, his private journal entries never meant to be published. If you want to learn more about Marcus Aurelius the man and his life, that’s a great place to start. Some other good books in this regard are Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson.

Why Study Philosophy?

When first discovering Marcus Aurelius and Stoic philosophy, you might wonder: Why read someone’s diary from 2,000 years ago? Isn’t philosophy some dusty academic field for nerds and intellectuals?

Actually, philosophy is not about analyzing the thoughts of people who died long ago. It’s about how to live a good life, right here, right now, and anything that can inspire us to do so is fair game — including the private thoughts of someone who hasn’t lived in two millennia.

It’s true that philosophy is an academic field concerned with the true nature of reality, the constituents of knowledge, and matters of existence. It is also, however, any theory that provides us with guiding principles for our behavior. Basically, any worldview that comes with a whole set of “do this, not that” rules can be considered a philosophy. This is the original meaning of the term, and if we consider it as such, it can be extremely useful in helping us live better.

But what kind of philosophy should you study? Whichever feels most helpful and relevant to your current life situation. There is no shortage of “flavors of philosophy.” Besides Stoicism as practiced by Marcus and other ancient Romans and Greeks, there’s Taoism, which goes back to ancient China. Bruce Lee was a practitioner of Eastern philosophy, for example. There are also more recent philosophies, like nihilism, existentialism, and rationalism.

As a beginner, however, the important part is not knowing what lies behind all of these terms. It is picking up some philosophy books, sampling a few life perspectives, and finding one that works for you. That’s where you should start, and that’s where books like Meditations come in.

If they could help an emperor stay humble, lead with courage, and not get overwhelmed by the day’s events, they surely can help you too face the challenges of life. For more insights about Stoicism, the philosophy Marcus espoused, check out The Daily Stoic, Discourses, Letters from a Stoic, A Guide to the Good Life, and The Nicomachean Ethics.

Conclusion

“Finis coronat opus,” as Marcus might have said. “The end crowns the work.” What do you think of our list of the best Marcus Aurelius quotes? Does it deserve a crown? A poop emoji? Are we missing your favorite quote, or do you have a different translation of one of our highlights that you’d like to share? Let us know on Twitter, and we’ll be happy to update this list as we go!

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

Brave New World Quotes: The 50 Best & Most Important Lines From Aldous Huxley’s Masterpiece

Brave New World is a dystopian science-fiction novel set in a futuristic London society in the year 2540 AD. The book was published in 1931 by Aldous Huxley. A literary classic and foundational work of dystopian literature, it still sparks discussions about technology, politics, and consumer culture almost 100 years after it was published. If you’re looking for the best quotes from Brave New World, this organized list is exactly the right place!

Huxley imagined a world in which technological progress would not lead to mass surveillance, mind control, and oppression, like it does in George Orwell’s 1984. Instead, he painted a future in which “everyone is happy now,” mostly thanks to drugs and frequent, non-committal sex. People are produced in factories, grouped into social classes, and conditioned to love their existence — and spend as much money as they can. At first, everything seems to run smoothly. When Native American John (“the Savage”), who grew up far from the hedonic shackles of civilization, enters the picture, however, the first cracks in this society begin to show…

In this list, we’ve compiled the most popular Brave New World quotes for you, based on the number of votes on Goodreads. We’ve also included Nik’s personal highlights from reading the book cover to cover. Finally, you’ll find some cool, custom-made images, ready for you to share your favorite quotes from the book on social media.

Want a summary of the book so you can better understand the quotes and their context? Download our free PDF, print it, and read along. Or save it for later and read it whenever you want!

Download PDF

You can easily navigate this list by jumping to any section that interests you using the table of contents below. If you want to share a quote, just highlight it, and sharing options for all major social media platforms will appear. Alternatively, you can also use the premade images we created for you in the last section of this list.

Are you ready to enter our Brave New World? Here we go!

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Brave New World

If you’re wondering what the most popular Brave New World quotes are, here are the ten lines from the book with the highest number of votes on Goodreads, ranging from over 5,000 votes for the top quote all the way to around 500 votes for number 10.

Note that some of the top quotes on Goodreads were actually not from the book but from Huxley on other occasions, and some were from Brave New World Revisited, a follow-on retrospective Huxley published 26 years later. I skipped those in favor of only including quotes from the original book. I also took all quote versions from the 2007 Vintage edition for extra consistency.

1. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

2. “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

3. “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”

4. “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.”

5. “I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.”

6. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

7. “I am I, and I wish I wasn’t.”

8. “I’d rather be myself,” he said. “Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”

9. “‘All right then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’ ‘Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’ There was a long silence. ‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.”

10. “No social stability without individual stability.”

My 40 Favorite Brave New World Quotes

When I first read Brave New World in its entirety recently, I made over 70 highlights in the book. I won’t include the ones that are already in the top 10 above, but here are 40 of the lines I found most noteworthy, in order of when they appear in the book:

11. “Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks—already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.”

12. “Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”

13. “Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.”

14. “‘Everyone belongs to everyone else, after all.’ One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!”

15. “Ending is better than mending.”

16. “You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

17. “‘What you need is a gramme of soma.’ ‘All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.’”

18. “The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one.”

19. “‘Did you ever feel,’ he asked, ‘as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren’t using—you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?’”

20. “When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.”

21. “‘Everybody’s happy now.’ ‘Yes, everybody’s happy now,’ echoed Lenina. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.”

22. “Bernard considered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time. ‘Then what’s time for?’ asked Lenina in some astonishment.”

23. “‘Talking? But what about?’ Walking and talking—that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.”

24. “‘When the individual feels, the community reels,’ Lenina pronounced. ‘Well, why shouldn’t it reel a bit?’”

25. “Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. […] Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.”

26. “‘Rags, rags!’ the boys used to shout at him. ‘But I can read,’ he said to himself, ‘and they can’t. They don’t even know what reading is.’ It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he didn’t mind when they made fun of him.”

27. “A man can smile and smile and be a villain.”

28. “Somehow it was as though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic.”

29. “Looking at the two pots, he had to laugh. ‘But the next one will be better,’ he said, and began to moisten another piece of clay. To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power—this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. […] They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness.”

30. “‘It is finished,’ said old Mitsima in a loud voice. ‘They are married.’ […] It is finished. Old Mitsima’s words repeated themselves in his mind. Finished, finished… In silence and from a long way off, but violently, desperately, hopelessly, he had loved Kiakimé. And now it was finished.”

31. “He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… He had discovered Time and Death and God.”

32. “The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray.”

33. “Murder kills only the individual—and, after all, what is an individual?”

34. “Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”

35. “Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory.”

36. “Once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose—well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily recondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.”

37. “‘What fun it would be,’ he thought, ‘if one didn’t have to think about happiness!’”

38. “One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.”

39. “You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.”

40. “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.”

41. “His conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run.”

42. “Every change is a menace to stability.”

43. “Happiness is a hard master—particularly other people’s happiness. A much harder master, if one isn’t conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.”

44. “People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We’ve gone on controlling ever since. It hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s been very good for happiness.”

45. “‘But God doesn’t change.’ ‘Men do, though.’ ‘What difference does that make?’ ‘All the difference in the world.’”

46. “You can’t have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.”

47. “Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic.”

48. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them… But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.”

49. “‘What you need,’ the Savage went on, ‘is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.’”

50. “In spite of their sadness—because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another—the three young men were happy.”

More Brave New World Quotes

Want more fascinating quotes from Brave New World? Well, at this point, the best way for you to find those is most likely to read the book. Here’s a quick overview and link to Amazon (affiliate). You can also ready our summary of the book by clicking the green button.

Favorite Quote

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” — Aldous Huxley

The Book in One Sentence

Brave New World* presents a futuristic society engineered perfectly around capitalism and scientific efficiency, in which everyone is happy, conform, and content — but only at first glance.

Why should you read it?

This book explores the negative sides of a seeming utopia. What happens in an ostensibly prosperous world in which everyone appears to be content and satisfied but that, below the surface, has a lot of problems? If that somewhat reminds you of our outwardly shiny world in which everyone seems to be Instagram-happy, read this book.

Key Takeaways

If the world were perfect and everything was easy, nothing would have any meaning.
We hate not fitting in more than anything else, and yet, we’ll never all be the same.
True happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin — we can’t have one without the other.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books

_____

Buy on Amazon*

Brave New World Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

If you want to post any of the above quotes to social media, you can do so with our “highlight and share” feature. That said, we also made some custom images for you to easily tap and spread. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

For some of the images, we used images from Unsplash. For others, we created some custom AI art. In any case, we tried to make each quote fit the dystopian vibe of the book. Happy sharing!

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Conclusion

That’s it for our list of the 50 best and most popular quotes from Brave New World. What do you think? Did we nail it? Did we forget an important one? Feel free to share your favorite with us on Twitter!

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 33 Best, Most Important, and Most Inspiring Quotes From Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist of all time. Born in 1940 in San Francisco, he lived a short life of just 32 years before, somewhat peacefully, dying of cerebral edema, an excess of liquids in the brain, in 1973. By that time, however, he had become a world-renowned martial artist, a million-dollar Hollywood superstar defying stereotypes, and created his own martial arts philosophy, Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist), uniting East and West in both body and spirit. If you’re looking for the best Bruce Lee quotes from this legend of film, fighting, and philosophy, you’ve come to the right place!

As part of our organized list, we’ll compile his 10 most popular lines based on reader votes from Goodreads. We’ll also include Nik’s 23 favorite quotes from Striking Thoughts, a collection of over 800 notes, ideas, and aphorisms written down by Bruce Lee himself over the course of his life. In-between, we’ll explain a little bit more about Bruce Lee the thinker as opposed to the fighter and break down his most important quote (the speech about water). Finally, we’ll provide some premade, custom images for you to share your favorite Bruce Lee quotes to social media.

The easiest way to navigate this list is to jump to whichever section interests you the most using the table of contents below. You can share any quote by highlighting it and using the options that will appear. Or, just skip to the images section and pick your favorite.

Now, before we get started, here’s a first line from Bruce to remember: “Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.” Bruce believed that the only way to find truth is to find your truth. Therefore, we should never take anything at face value. So enjoy these quotes and lessons from Bruce, but reflect on them carefully, and only keep what serves you.

That said, let’s get into the best quotes from Bruce Lee, a true master of kung fu, zen, and life itself!

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From Bruce Lee

If you’re wondering which Bruce Lee quotes people like the most, I did some digging for you. First, his “Be Water” analogy is arguably the most popular. I’ll explain why in the section dedicated to that quote in particular.

Regarding his other sayings, the following top 10 have each received between 2,600 and 600 votes on Goodreads. To share any one of them, just highlight and pick your social media platform of choice, but remember: “A teacher is never a giver of truth—he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst.”

1. “Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

2. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

3. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”

4. “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

5. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”

6. “Be happy, but never satisfied.”

7. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

8. “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”

9. “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”

10. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

My 23 Favorite Bruce Lee Quotes

In 2018, I bought a copy of Striking Thoughts*, a compilation of Bruce Lee’s notes, sayings, and ideas, compiled by his student and editor John Little. Since I like to savor the quotes and reflect on them, I still haven’t gone through all 825 aphorisms, but I’ve already highlighted, even written about, plenty of them.

Here are 23 of my favorite ones, but, as Bruce would say: “Bear in mind I seek neither your approval nor to influence you. So do not make up your mind as to ‘this is this’ or ‘that is that.’ I will be more than satisfied if you begin to learn to investigate everything yourself from now on.”

11. “Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.”

12. “It is the life of perfection which seems to be incomplete, and of fullness which seems to be empty.”

13. “To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever. If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

14. “You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.”

15. “A fat belly cannot believe that such a thing as hunger exists.”

16. “Nothingness means “no thingness” — there is only process, happening. When we accept and enter this nothingness, the void, then the desert starts to bloom.”

17. “Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat — to learn to die — is to be liberated from it. Once you accept, you are free to flow and to harmonize. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.”

18. “You know how I like to think of myself? As a human being.”

19. “We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.”

20. “When I look around, I always learn something, and that is to be always yourself. And to express yourself. To have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it, which seems to me to be the prevalent thing happening in Hong Kong. Like they always copy mannerisms, but they’ll never start from the very root of his being, which is ‘how can I be me?’”

21. “Most people can talk without listening. Very few can listen without talking.”

22. “The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly, but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows.”

23. “An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding — styles and patterns have come to conclusion, therefore they [have] ceased to be intelligent.”

24. “There was a fine butcher who used the same knife year after year, yet it never lost its delicate, precise edge. After a lifetime of service, it was still as useful and effective as when it was new. When asked how he had preserved his knife’s fine edge, he said: ‘I follow the line of the hard bone. I do not attempt to cut it, nor to smash it, nor to contend with it in any way. That would only destroy my knife.’ In daily living, one must follow the course of the barrier. To try to assail it will only destroy the instrument. And no matter what some people will say, barriers are not the experience of any one person, or any one group of persons. They are the universal experience.”

25. “Oftentimes people come up to me and ask, ‘Bruce, are you really that good?’ I say, ‘Well, if I tell you I’m good, probably you will say I’m boasting; but if I tell you I’m no good, you’ll know I’m lying.’ I have the absolute confidence not to be number two, but then I have enough sense also to realize that there can be no number one.”

26. “To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals is courtesy; to inferiors is nobleness; and to all, safety!”

27. “The method for health promotion is based on water, as flowing water never grows stale. The idea is not to overdevelop or to overexert, but to normalize the function of the body.”

28. “A learned man once went to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the Zen teacher talked, the learned man frequently interrupted to express his own opinion about this or that. Finally, the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed. ‘Stop,’ said the learned man. ‘The cup is full, no more can be poured in.’ ‘Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions,’ replied the Zen teacher. ‘If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?’”

29. “If I say that ‘everyone under the sun is a member of a universal family,’ you may think that I am bluffing and idealistic. But if anyone still believes in racial differences, I think he is too backward and narrow. Perhaps he still does not understand man’s equality and love.”

30. “Who is there that can make muddy water clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will become clear of itself. Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose? But keep calm and let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arrest.”

31. “There is another bit of Chinese philosophy that has a bearing on problems common to all human kind. We say, ‘The oak tree is mighty, yet it will be destroyed by a mighty wind because it resists the elements; the bamboo bends with the wind, and by bending, survives.’”

32. “A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.”

33. “I don’t know what is the meaning of death, but I am not afraid to die — and I go on, non-stop, going forward [with life]. Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do and what I’ve done, I’ve done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can’t expect much more from life.”

The Most Important Bruce Lee Quote Explained

Bruce Lee’s most influential piece of advice is arguably his “Be Water” analogy, which he shared repeatedly and in a variety of forms. The quote takes the #2 spot on Goodreads, but in a Google Trends analysis, it outranks even the search volume for Bruce Lee himself. Since Bruce shared the metaphor in a rare talk show interview, it also gets millions of views across hundreds of Youtube videos and variations of the clip every year. Bruce’s daughter, Shannon, also confirmed it to be his most quoted line in a podcast. Therefore, this is the undisputed #1. But what does it mean?

First, the connection between martial arts and water goes back almost 400 years. In 1645, famed martial artist and swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote in The Book of Five Rings: “Taking water as the basic point of reference, one makes the mind fluid. Water conforms to the shape of the vessel, square or round; it can be a drop, and it can be an ocean.” It is highly likely both Bruce Lee and his master, Ip Man, were familiar with this text, since it has held cult status for centuries.

Second, while training under Ip Man from age 13 to 18, Lee’s teacher really tried to drive the point of fluidity home with his student. “More yin, less yang!” he would say. At one point, he refused to give Lee any further lessons until he grasped this principle, sending him away to think by himself for a week. Lee took a boat, drifted around in the Hong Kong harbor, and that’s when…

Third, Bruce Lee’s insight about water hit him as he hit the water surrounding his boat in frustration (pun intended). As his daughter recounts in a podcast, Lee punched the water, wondering why he couldn’t understand the master’s lesson. Suddenly, he realized: “The water just moved out of the way! I can’t hurt it. It is infinitely soft and will adapt to whatever enters it. At the same time, it can be a crushing force.” That’s when Bruce understood, and, after years of refinement, he shared this idea in various forms.

The first and most famous is the variant he shared on the Pierre Berton Show in 1971:

“Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Another version, which I can’t find the source of, but which I assume to be one of Lee’s many written notes and thoughts, goes as follows:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”

Finally, in Striking Thoughts*, Bruce offers the most polished form of the idea:

“Be like water; water has form and yet it has no form. It is the softest element on earth, yet it penetrates the hardest rock. It has no shape of its own, yet it can take any shape in which it is placed. In a cup, it becomes the shape of the cup. In a vase, it takes the shape of the vase and curls about the stems of flowers. Put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Please observe the adaptability of water. If you squeeze it fast, the water will flow out quickly. If you squeeze it slowly, it will come out slowly. Water may seem to move in contradiction, even uphill, but it chooses any way open to it so that it may reach the sea. It may flow swiftly or it may flow slowly, but its purpose is inexorable, its destiny sure.”

Water is balance. Water judges slowly. It doesn’t look left or right. It is 100% focused on its destination, and it will flow through whichever path is available.

Thanks to its never-ending balancing act, water always finds its way home. Water always returns to a resting state. That’s why, when we act like water, we’ll better handle life’s challenges. We’ll be calmer, more adaptive, and persistent yet not stubborn.

When we are water, we are always exactly where we are meant to be, perfectly adapted to the present moment. That’s the balance we all need and desire, and that’s why Bruce Lee’s metaphor is still making waves (pun intended), more than half a century after his death.

If you’re looking for a slightly longer explanation, you can ready my piece, “Be Water, My Friend.”

Fun fact: I recently rewatched Cowboy Bebop, a legendary anime, and the main character, Spike Spiegel, is based on Bruce Lee to a good extent. In one episode, he even shares a very familiar-sounding piece of advice: “It’s not about strength or power. You gotta be fluid. You have to be like water.”

More Bruce Lee Quotes

The single-best way to get more original Bruce Lee quotes, in my opinion, is to buy a copy of Striking Thoughts*. Here’s a quick overview of the book, along with a snazzy buy button which will earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you if you click it. Thank you!

Favorite Quote

“Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.” — Bruce Lee

The Book in One Sentence

Striking Thoughts* is a compendium of over 800 aphorisms, sayings, and private notes recorded by Bruce Lee throughout his life, detailing his perspectives on over 70 topics, including, but not limited to, martial arts, philosophy, and life.

Why should you read it?

If you’re an aspiring martial arts student, athlete, actor, artist, or philosopher, this is a must read. For anyone else, it’s a treasure trove of daily advice and comfort, ready to offer the right line at the right time, no matter what you need in the present moment. Full of both clear insights and ambivalent ideas that’ll make you think, this book will stay with you for a long time.

Key Takeaways

No one will give you the answers to the most important questions in life. You’ll have to discover them for yourself.
Philosophy is not just for academics. It is about finding practical, relevant rules that will help you master everyday life.
Life is about honest, untwisted self-expression.

If you want to learn more, you can get a copy for yourself:

Buy on Amazon*

The Best Bruce Lee Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

Since Bruce was a real person, we thought we’d stick with real pictures instead of our usual, AI-generated backgrounds. One is taken from Wikipedia, the others courtesy of brucelee.com, the family’s official website. Happy sharing!

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Who Was Bruce Lee? (The Philosopher vs. the Fighter)

We’ve all heard of Bruce Lee the fighter, the martial artist performing dazzling moves in his TV shows, feature films, and even a few rare public demonstrations. Born as a dual citizen of Hong Kong and the US to somewhat famous parents, Lee became a child actor, acting in some 20 (non-fighting) movies by the time he was 18.

Due to his poor academic performance and continuous involvement in street fights in Hong Kong, however, his parents put him into martial arts training. Lee trained privately with martial arts legend Ip Man, and he won a boxing tournament by knocking out the previous champion. Lee refused to see any one martial art as superior, studying wing chun, tai chi, boxing, and any other fighting style from which he felt he could learn.

Besides his obvious physical talent, rigorous training, and ridiculous speed, it is this drawing from an eclectic mix of sources that led Lee to developing his own fighting style, Jeet Kune Do, or “The Way of the Intercepting Fist.” Jeet Kune Do is more than a martial art, however. It is also a philosophy — and that’s where the much lesser known Bruce Lee comes in.

Living in the US from 1959, he studied drama, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Washington for a while, and by the time he opened his own martial arts school and showed up at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships demonstrating his skills, he was as much a philosopher as he was a martial arts master.

“Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back.”

“I thought Bruce was a brilliant, fine philosopher about everyday living. He was very much into finding out who he was. His comment to people was ‘Know yourself,'” fellow movie legend Steve McQueen said about his teacher. And to do that, to know himself, Bruce studied Zen, Taoism, and Buddhism, but he also studied Western philosophers.

As such, Jeet Kune Do was “not an organized institution that one can be a member of,” Bruce said. “I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds.” He wished that, rather than creating yet another style people would subscribe to and then argue over, Jeet Kune Do would be “simply the direct expression of one’s feelings with the minimum of movements and energy.”

“Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back,” Bruce said. He felt the same way about life, and that’s why he collected plenty of aphorisms on topics ranging from reality to marriage to the ego, from racism to faith to success.

Bruce realized that both life and martial arts are not questions with one definitive answer. That’s why he studied widely, collected ideas broadly, and only used what he felt was necessary and relevant at any given time. It is in this overarching, philosophical approach, that we find the true essence of Bruce Lee, and it is also where we can learn the most from him, even if we’re not training to be martial artists. We hope our list of quotes will help you do just that.

Conclusion

Aaaaaaand cut! That concludes our list of the 33 best and most important quotes from Bruce Lee. What do you think? Did we manage to capture his spirit? I hope we picked some quotes you didn’t yet know. Bruce Lee the fighter is fascinating, but Bruce Lee the philosopher is enlightening, and both are worth studying. If your favorite Bruce Lee quote is one we didn’t cover, tweet at us and let us know! And now, in the master’s own words:

“I have to leave now, my friend. You have a long journey ahead of you, and you must travel light. From now on drop all your burden of preconceived conclusions behind, and “open” yourself to everything and everyone ahead. Remember, my friend, the usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.”

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The Catcher in the Rye Quotes: The 44 Best & Most Important Quotes From J. D. Salinger’s Masterpiece

The Catcher in the Rye is a post-World War II coming-of-age story, first published in 1951 by J. D. Salinger. Dealing with important questions of morality, identity, meaning, and connection, the book has become a hallmark read for young adults and grown-ups alike. If you’re looking for the best quotes from this masterpiece, our organized list of The Catcher in the Rye quotes will be just the right place!

Based on the number of most votes on Goodreads, we’ve compiled the top 10 quotes from the book for you below. We’ll also share 34 more of Nik’s favorite highlights from reading the book, an explanation of its most important line, as well as some more information about the book. Finally, we made some pretty cool images with the best quotes for you to share on social media.

Want a summary of the book so you can better understand the quotes and their context? Download our free PDF, print it, and read along. Or save it for later and read it whenever you want!

Download PDF

You can jump to any section that interests you by using the clickable table of contents below. If you want to share a quote, just highlight it, and sharing options for several social media platforms will appear, including a simple “copy to clipboard” option. Alternatively, you can also use the sharing images we already prepared for you.

Okay, here we go. Let’s get into the 44 best quotes from The Catcher in the Rye!

The Most Important Quote From The Catcher in the Rye Explained

Before you can understand the most important line from this book, there are two things you need. One is an idea of where it falls in the plot, the other is some context on when, by who, and why the book was written.

As for the latter, author J. D. Salinger fought in the Battle of Normandy in World War II. After he came home, the horrors of war had changed him forever. The period of economic prosperity that ensued felt hollow to him and other survivors. Like teenagers growing up, Salinger felt he had lost his innocence, and he must have grieved that loss greatly. The book became a cathartic experience for him and others, and that’s why it deals with the themes of loss of innocence, reluctance to grow up, being frustrated at the superficiality of the world, and being confused around morality, identity, and relationships.

With regards to the plot, the novel follows narrator and rebellious teenage boy Holden Caulfield’s adventures over a weekend alone in New York City. Despite having wealthy parents and everything he needs, Holden keeps getting expelled from his schools. This time, he decides to paint the town before his parents find out.

After meeting up with old friends and dates, almost losing his virginity to a prostitute, wandering around aimlessly, and spending most of his money, Holden sneaks back into his home. Talking to his little sister Phoebe, the only person he truly likes, envies, and wants to protect — all at the same time — he shares his dream of what he wants to be, a dream that is based on a line from a song, “if a body catch a body comin’ through the rye:”

“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

This is Holden desperately trying to hold on to his childhood and ideals — something that Phoebe still has but he is about to lose. At the same time, Phoebe is more mature and realistic than him, and when she tells him that he quoted the line wrong (and that it’s from a poem, not a song), Holden breaks down and cries.

The quote marks the breakthrough point in the story, the moment the hero loses the ground beneath his feet and must re-evaluate everything. For Holden, the bubble of childhood innocence is slowly fading away. Now confronted with the real world, he must admit he barely knows anything, and most of what he thought he knew has turned out to be false.

The question is will Holden be able to hold on to some of his youthful hope and optimism, or will he become a disillusioned, resigned adult, like so many of the people he meets throughout the course of the book? I’ll leave that for you to find out, but that’s my take on the defining quote from this book (which is also where the title comes from, by the way).

The 10 Most Popular Quotes From The Catcher in the Rye

Despite having already sold a staggering 65 million copies, The Catcher in the Rye continues to sell about a million units each year. One of the reasons is that the book is often assigned reading in high schools. Fun fact: It is also one of the most frequently banned books across the United States.

If you’re wondering what the most popular quotes from this classic of American literature are, here are the ten lines from the book with the highest number of votes on Goodreads. Each of these quotes has received between around 2,000 and 20,000 likes, with the number one quote outpacing number two by a factor of four (21,000+ likes vs. 4,800+). Then, votes slowly go down from there. To share any quote, just highlight and pick your medium of choice:

1. “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

2. “Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

3. “I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”

4. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

5. “I am always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

6. “I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice.”

7. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

8. “That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

9. “Mothers are all slightly insane.”

10. “It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”

My 34 Favorite The Catcher in the Rye Quotes

In 2022, I went to Portugal and visited the oldest bookstore in the world. Naturally, I had to buy some books. Among their English selection, they happened to have The Catcher in the Rye. What a great opportunity to finally read this masterpiece!

I read the entire book on the plane back home, and I made about 80 highlights. I’ll share the 20 most interesting ones below. Out of the top 10 above, I also highlighted eight. I’m not going to include those again. The rest is in order of when the lines appear in the book:

11. “What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”

12. “‘Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.’ ‘Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.’ Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right — I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”

13. “I’m pretty sure he yelled ‘Good luck!’ at me. I hope to hell not. I’d never yell ‘Good luck!’ at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.”

14. “‘That’s just the trouble with all you morons. You never want to discuss anything. That’s the way you can always tell a moron. They never want to discuss anything intellig—’ Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddam floor again.”

15. “All I did was, I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.”

16. “People always clap for the wrong things.”

17. “The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl — a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean — she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. I can’t help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they’re just scared as hell, or whether they’re just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame’ll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping.”

18. “‘So long,’ I said. I didn’t thank her or anything. I’m glad I didn’t.”

19. “I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they’re really stupid or not.”

20. “The thing is, it’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs — if yours are really good ones and theirs aren’t. You think if they’re intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don’t give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do.”

21. “Catholics are always trying to find out if you’re a Catholic. […] He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would’ve enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all.”

22. “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.”

23. “Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

24. “If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good any more.”

25. “I have one of these very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”

26. “Every time you mention some guy that’s strictly a bastard — very mean, or very conceited and all — and when you mention it to the girl, she’ll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn’t keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion.”

27. “The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they’ll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don’t like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they’ll say he’s conceited. Even smart girls do it.”

28. “The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.”

29. “I really think he hated the Army worse than the war.”

30. “That’s the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it.”

31. “The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody’d say something smarter than he had.”

32. “He said he would, but he probably didn’t even give her my message. People never give your message to anybody.”

33. “‘Hey. You gonna see that Valencia babe when you go back in the bar?’ I asked him. ‘It’s highly probable,’ he said. Witty bastard. All I ever meet is witty bastards.”

34. “Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”

35. “PHOEBE WEATHERFIELD CAULFIELD, 4B-1. That killed me. Her middle name is Josephine, for God’s sake, not Weatherfield. She doesn’t like it, though. Every time I see her she’s got a new middle name for herself.”

36. “Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake.”

37. “I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way.”

38. “But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes. What I think is, you’re supposed to leave somebody alone if he’s at least being interesting and he’s getting all excited about something.”

39. “‘I don’t want to scare you,’ he said, ‘but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.’”

40. “‘I think that one of these days,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.’”

41. “‘Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.’”

42. “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street.”

43. “I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another ‘Fuck you.’ It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘Fuck you’ right under your nose.”

44. “The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.”

The book definitely has a depressing feel to it, but there are lots of silver linings as well, as you can tell from these lines. Despite being immature and feeling lost, Holden makes a lot of strong points throughout the novel. All in all, he’s an endearing hero giving us a glimpse at our own psyche, and that makes this book worth reading.

More The Catcher in the Rye Quotes

The single-best way to get more good lines from The Catcher in the Rye is to read the book. Therefore, here’s a quick overview and some buttons you can use to read our summary or buy yourself a copy on Amazon (affiliate link).

Favorite Quote

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” — J. D. Salinger

The Book in One Sentence

The Catcher in the Rye* describes the adventures of well-off teenage boy Holden Caulfield on a weekend out alone in New York City, illuminating the struggles of young adults with existential questions of morality, identity, meaning, and connection.

Why should you read it?

If you’re a teenager or the parent of one, this book will help you understand better how you (or your child) thinks. It asks plenty of tough questions, and not just for young adults. If you feel lonely, anxious, uncertain, disconnected, or disillusioned, this classic will provide some comfort but also a hard reality check. If you want to become more self-aware, this is a good read.

Key Takeaways

The only way to find meaning in life is to care about something and work for it.
If you don’t take risks, you’ll form an identity, let alone become who you want to be.
Life is not that complicated if you choose to find joy in the little things.

If you want to learn more, you can click below or get a copy for yourself.

Read on Four Minute Books

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Buy on Amazon*

The Catcher in the Rye Quotes for Sharing on Social Media

We even created some AI art for the backgrounds so that each image fits the lost, longing feeling you get while reading the book. Simply hover over an image with your cursor or tap on it for some sharing options to appear. Happy sharing!

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Conclusion

That’s a wrap on our list of the 44 best and most important quotes from The Catcher in the Rye. What do you think? Did we pick some good ones? Is your personal favorite missing? Feel free to share your own top highlights with us on Twitter!

Other Quote Lists

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far: