Motivational Quotes and Affirmations

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I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for motivational quotes and affirmations. I find inspiration in sourcing words of wisdom, copying them, and pasting them into my scrapbook which I keep on top of my desk. I also have a lot of little yellow Post-Its with scribbles of sensible sayings stuck all around.

I have three daily affirmations that I faithfully read every morning. They remind me of my overall place in existence and how fast time goes by. They’re words from the Stoics or at least those who have Stoic-like attitudes. Allow me to open my book and share some of what I’ve collected.

“Contempt for failure.”

“Did I show up dressed today?”

“Memento Mori” ~Marcus Aurelius

“Ya gotta wanna.” ~Jimmy Pattison

“To understand is to know what to do.”

“Focus. Cut the noise. Double the results.”

“Invest the Time. Do the work. Tell the truth.”

“This, too, shall pass away.” ~Abraham Lincoln

“Overcome resistance. Trust the muse.” ~Stephen King

“Three common traits of winners. Desire. Determination. Confidence.”

“You don’t really understand something until you can build it.” ~Richard Feynman

“If you do what everyone else is doing, you shouldn’t be surprised to get the same results. Different outcomes come from doing things differently.”

“The long game wins come from repeatedly doing hard things today that make tomorrow easier.”

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life…the one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” ~Seneca

“Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s the dogged, incremental, constant progress over a very long time.” ~Albert Einstein

“There are those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who make things happen. Strive to be one of those who make things happen. If you show others what you can do, they will respect you far more than if you had simply told them what you’d done. Anyone can quarrel with words, but actions speak for themselves.” ~Tommy Lasorda

“Failure seems to be nature’s plan for preparing us for great responsibilities. If everything we attempted in life were achieved with a minimum of effort and came out exactly as planned, how little we would learn—and how boring life would be! And how arrogant we would become if we succeeded at everything we attempted. Failure allows us to develop the essential quality of humility. It is not easy—when you are the person experiencing failure—to accept it philosophically, serene in the knowledge that this is one of life’s great learning experiences. But it is. Nature’s ways are not always easily understood, but they are repetitive and therefore predictable. You can be absolutely certain that when you feel you are being most unfairly tested, you are being prepared for great achievement.”” ~Napoleon Hill

“I believe that life operates at two levels. The higher level if the muse level—the level of your calling. The lower level is our material plane. On that plane is the force I call Resistance with a capital R. That’s there to stop us from reaching the higher level. The purpose of discipline is that discipline is what takes you to that higher level. That’s why you have to have it—discipline. You can’t wish your way to it. You can’t chant your way there. You can’t—that book The Secret—vibe or manifest your way there. The law of attraction is bullshit. It’s not going to get you there. The only way you get there is through hard and disciplined work. You got to punch your ticket and pay the price.” ~Steven Pressfield

“Doing your best isn’t about the result. You know you did your best before you show up. Over the long term, the long game, the average person who constantly puts themselves in a good position beats the genius who puts themselves in a poor position. And the best way to put yourself in a good position is with good preparation.”

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~Muhammad Ali

“One of the biggest keys to success at anything is believing you can figure it out as you go along. A lot of people won’t start until they figure it out. And because most hard things can’t be figured out in advance, they never start.” ~Richard Feynman

“Any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in the conscious mind through constant repetitive thought and emotionalized by the subconscious and acted upon by whatever natural and logical means may be available.” ~Napoleon Hill

“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are.”

“The Formula: The courage to start. The discipline to focus. The confidence to figure it out. The patience to know progress is not always visible. The persistence to keep going, even on the bad days.”

“Success is that place in the road where preparation and opportunity meet, but too few people recognize it because too often it comes disguised as hard work.”

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” ~Jordan Peterson

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

“Pro golfers have learned to miss their shots by narrower margins than amateurs.”

“Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” ~Charlie Munger

“Being successful is easy. Staying successful is hard.”

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

What about you Kill Zoners? Do any of these clips resonate with you? How about sharing one, two, three, or more of your own?

48 thoughts on “Motivational Quotes and Affirmations”

  1. “Discipline is the difference between what you want NOW and what you want MOST.”

    I’ve seen it attributed to several people, including Abraham Lincoln, but I won’t believe it until I see a print source that’s credible.

    Doesn’t matter – this is the one that sits by my desk.

  2. “Flip fear of failure upside down. Instead of bogging down fearing whether anyone will like what you’ve written, fear how you will feel if you don’t finish the story.” paraphrasing Dean Wesley Smith

  6. “I only write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.” – Peter De Vries

    “Write like you’re in love. Edit like you’re in charge.” – JSB

  7. “Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little.” Holley Gerth

    And one of my favorites…

    “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you. Figure out what you have to say.” Barbara Kingslover

    Happy birthday, Garry! Hope you have a special day. <3

  8. Thanks so much for posting this. I love motivational quotes. The one that really resonates with me is the quote on commitment.

    Here are a couple I’ve collected. The first is my favorite, and motivates me all the time.

    “What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.” C. S. Lewis

    “In the book Art & Fear, authors David Bales and Ted Orland describe a ceramics class in which half of the students were asked to focus only on producing a high quantity of work while the other half was tasked with producing work of high quality. For a grade at the end of the term, the “quantity” group’s pottery would be weighed, and fifty pounds of pots would automatically get an A, whereas the “quality” group only needed to turn in one—albeit perfect—piece. Surprisingly, the works of highest quality came from the group being graded on quantity, because they had continually practiced, churned out tons of work, and learned from their mistakes. The other half of the class spent most of the semester paralyzed by theorizing about perfection, which sounded disconcertingly familiar to me—like all my cases of writer’s block.” — KIM LIAO

  10. Mine is kind of long but when I’m slogging through the middle of a book I take it out and read it…
    “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

    The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” Teddy Roosevelt

  11. I have always loved motivational quotes. When the oldest child went away to college I gave her a book of quotes I had collected. It runs 36 pages. Here are a few:

    “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
    Arthur C. Clarke
    Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.
    Robert Burns/Robert Kennedy 

    “Technology is a gift of G-d. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of G-d’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.” Freeman Dyson

    Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. Sir Henry Royce

    Harold: You sure have a way with people.
    Maude: Well, they’re my species! Harold & Maude

    Satchel Paige’s “Six Rules for Staying Young”.
    1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
    2. If you stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
    3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
    4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.
    5. Avoid running at all times.
    6. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you

    I am a pilot.
    There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.
    Federal Air Regulations are written on tombstones. You job is to follow, not write FARs.

    One of my classmates, Eric Fiore had a list of “Ericisims”. His wife, Carol, also a classmate, included them in his biography. Eric, F-15 pilot, and later test pilot was killed on an experimental flight, October 10, 2000. This is the first Ericisim.
    Shit happens, and it doesn’t mean it’s somebody’s fault.

  12. Good stuff, Alan. I relate to the pilot quote, only my background is saltwater marine. I replace “pilot” with “skipper” and it is very applicable.

  14. Happy Birthday, Garry! See, turning 39 wasn’t so bad, was it? 😉

    Patricia already mentioned my fave quote by Teddy Roosevelt.

    Ali’s quotes were excellent–adding them to my collection.

    “This too shall pass.” That’s gotten me through many tough times.

    • I’m a Senior-Plus-Two today, Debbie, and I feel like I’m 39. I told Sue on a side thread yesterday that I had a recent medical checkup and the doc said I was functioning like a thirty year old. See what a life without sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll can do 🙂

  15. Happy birthday, Garry! No matter what, birthdays are special, so bask in it.

    This is the only quote I have by my computer, but I love a lot of these posted today.

    “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
    George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

  16. A lot to choose from in this post, Mr. Rodgers. (Sorry . . . couldn’t resist!) 🙂

    My favorite this moment: If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. ~Jordan Peterson

    Wish I’d understood that about 5 decades ago!

  17. Love the list, Garry. I especially like “Invest the Time. Do the work. Tell the truth.”

    I’ve seen some of my favorites mentioned above. Here are a few others I like:

    “If it isn’t hard, why do it?” — Don’t know who said it, but I agree.
    “Festina Lente” — Make haste slowly — Caesar Augustus
    “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” — Aesop

  18. Just thought of another one, from “A League of Their Own.”

    “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”

  21. Better late than never, I s’pose…

    Two of mine are:
    ▪ “Whatever you are, be a good one.” attributed to Abraham Lincoln…
    ▪ “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
    Stephen King

    And belated birthday salutations, Sir…

  22. Reading JSB’s recent post reminded me of this one by Dennis Palumbo.

    The Second Hard Truth: With every new project, you have to teach yourself how to write it. Each new piece of writing is unique unto itself. To put it another way, you and the thing you’re about to write are encountering each other for the first time. The script or novel or play you wrote last year, or last month, can’t help much, regardless of its similarities in style or content to the new project. For one thing, you’re in a different place emotionally, creatively, perhaps even professionally. You bring a different set of feelings and attitudes, whether or not you can even articulate these to yourself. Even if you’re trying consciously to re-create what you’ve done before, it’s not really possible.

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