Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches. Use auto-suggestion, have faith, imagination and overcome fear and time is your opposite player as in checkerboard.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
You have to know what is right for you and go after it regardless of what others say.
—Les Brown
In effective personal leadership, visualization and affirmation techniques emerge naturally out of a foundation of well thought through purposes and principles that become the center of a person’s life.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
Caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person. If you cannot imagine, ‘This might happen to me,’ you are able to say to yourself with indifference, ‘Who cares?’
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
The dreamers are the saviors of the world.
—James Allen (1864–1912) British Philosophical Writer
The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of the world is not.
—Wilfred Grenfell (1865–1940) Canadian Humanitarian, Doctor
Peter Keating: “Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so serious, so old. Everything’s important with you. Everything’s great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever be comfortable—and unimportant?”
Howard Roark: “No”.
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
What on earth are you doing for Heaven’s sake?
—Indian Proverb
I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
—Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French Theologian, Musician, Philosopher, Physician
You see, it’s never the environment; it’s never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events—how we interpret them—that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow.
—Tony Robbins (b.1960) American Self-Help Author, Entrepreneur
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.
—Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British Head of State
The crowning blessing of life is to be born with a bias to some pursuit.
—S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall)
There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.
—Robert Brault
My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?
—Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American Cartoonist, Writer, Artist
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
In a just cause the weak will beat the strong.
—Sophocles (495–405 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
Nourish the mind like you would your body. The mind cannot survive on junk food.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
—Viktor Frankl (1905–97) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
All men seek one goal: success or happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal-a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends-wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
A useless life is an early death.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years, and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.
—Charles Du Bos (1882–1939) French Literary Critic
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose; all other things, to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are at the most but mere appendixes and little props.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist