I adore inspirational quotations– and I’ll admit that I have a rather silly habit of keeping long lists of my favorites.  After spending a considerable amount of time weeding through the bunch, I’m pleased to present 41 tidbits of advice from famous folks who know/knew a thing or two about leadership, determination, and putting your heart into something you’re just crazy about.

Please comment with your own favorite quotations to add to the list. I’d love to hear what gets you up and running, and doing what you do best!

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
- Albert Einstein

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

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
- Anne Frank

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”
-Barack Obama

“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.”
-Barack Obama

“When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.”
- Betty Bender

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”
- Betty Reese

“If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.”
- Charles M. Schulz

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”
- Dr. Seuss

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
- e. e. cummings

“The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.”
- Elaine Agather

“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.”
- Ella Williams

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen”
- Frank Lloyd Wright

”The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.”
- George Eliot

“I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”
- Harry S. Truman

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“When a dog runs at you, whistle for him”
- Henry David Thoreau

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
- John Quincy Adams

“Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another.”
- Kenny Ausubel

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
- Kurt Vonnegut

“A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
- Mark Twain

“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catchers mitt on both hands.  You need to be able to throw something back.”
- Maya Angelou

“The world belongs to the energetic.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your reactions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”
- Robert F. Kennedy

“Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.”
- Ronald Reagan

“Find a need and fill it.”
- Ruth Stafford Peale

“We can always live on less when we have more to live for.”
- S. Stephen McKenney

“We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.”
- Sonia Johnson

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
-Thomas Edison

“I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.”
- Warren G. Bennis

About the author

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MPA. Chief Digital Marketing Officer at IMPACTS Research & Development. Nonprofit marketer, Gen Y museum, zoo & aquarium writer/speaker, web engagement geek, data nerd, marathoner, nomad, herbivore