Inspiring quotes from Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand, a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, is popularly known for creating a philosophy she named "Objectivism" and for her influential and controversial ideas that have attracted both enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciation.

Here are some of her inspiring quotes:

1. "Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."

2. "The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."

3. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

4. "A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving."

Part 2: Napoleon Bonaparte's quotes

Napoleon Bonaparte, better known as simply "Napoleon" was one of the greatest military leaders of all time. Although he was France's greatest ever general,
he was actually of Italian descent. Not everything he did and said was wonderful, but
isn't that true of all of us?

Say what you will about him, but he knew how to get results.

He was famous for passionate and relentless "action".

Here are the additional quotes from him:

1. "A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights."

2. "Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

3. "The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains."

4. "Victory belongs to the most persevering."

Quotes from Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington

Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington - a Greek-American columnist and writer. She leads the public interest group The Detroit Project, which lobbies for manufacturing of cars running on alternative fuels. She is also widely known as the founder of the highly successful news website and weblog, The Huffington Post (8.9 million unique visitors by February 2009 according to Nielsen Net Ratings).

Here are her inspiring quotes:

1. "But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid."

2. "We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw
up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success."

3. "The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics - and our external ones too - the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are…."

4. "Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me."

5. "The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become fearless… is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection."

James Russell Lowell's famous quotations

James Russell Lowell - an American poet and diplomat. His poem The Present Crisis was one of the first works that addressed the issue of slavery and considered to have a major impact on the modern civil rights movement. This poem was often quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. and was also the source to the hymn Once to Every Man and Nation.

1. "All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."

2. "Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime."

3. "No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself."

4. "In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak."

5. "Endurance is the crowning quality, and patience all the passion of great hearts."

Margaret Fuller's quotes

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli was an American journalist, critic and women's rights activist. She wrote the book “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”, considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Here are some quotes from Margaret Fuller:

1. "I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression."

2. “Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.”

3. “Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.”

4. "Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow."

5."Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife."

George Bernard Shaw's Inspiring Quotes

George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

He also received an Academy Award for Writing the Adapted Screenplay for the film Pygmalion in 1938.

Here are his inspiring quotations:
1. "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."

2. "The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation."

3. "When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work."

4. "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

5. "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

Plato's Inspiring Quotes

Plato was a great philosopher, writer and mathematician. He was the founder of the Academy in Athens and a student of Socrates.

1. "All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."

2. "The beginning is the most important part of the work."

3. "Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others."

4. "Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, you cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation."

5. "I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work. "

Washington Irving's quotes

Washington Irving was an American essayist, biographer, historian and author known for his two best short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

Here are his famous inspiring quotations:

1. "Great minds have purposes; little minds have wishes."

2. "One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more."

3. "Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles."

4. "There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted."

5. "Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them."

ANDREW CARNEGIE's Inspirational Quotes

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-born American businessman, industrialist and major Philanthropist.


Here are his inspirational quotes:

1. "Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket."

2. "Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!"

3. "Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately."

4. "The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it."

5. "Aim for the highest."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, poet and one of the greatest orators of his time.





Here are his quotes:

• "An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."
• "The reward of a thing well done is having done it."
• "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."
• "As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way."
• "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

Michael Jordan's inspiring quotes

Michael Jordan, one ofthe greatest basketball players of all time.

Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player and active businessman. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation, and was instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

Here are some inspiring quotes from Michael Jordan:

• "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

• "I don't do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results."

• "I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come."

• "Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen."

• "My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength."

Inspirational quotes from Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo, a French poet, playwright, and novelist.
His best-known works are Les Miserables and Notre-Dame de Paris.

Victor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France.

In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests primarily on his poetic and dramatic output and only secondarily on his novels. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).

Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.


The following are Hugo's quotes:

• "Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace."
  

• "Perseverance, secret of all triumphs. "

• "A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor."
  

• "He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life."
  

• "People do not lack strength; they lack will."

Richard Bach's quotes

Richard Bach, an American writer
widely known for his bestsellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
Illusions and The Adventures Of A Reluctant Messiah.

The following are his inspiring quotes:

• “In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.”
  

• “In order to win, you must expect to win.”

• "You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."
  

• “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”

• “Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. ‘Nothing’ is the worst thing that can happen to us.”
  

Famous Quotes from Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general who became Emperor of France
from 1804 to 1814.

Napoleon I (born Napoleone di Buonaparte, later Napoléon Bonaparte) (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who had significant impact on modern European history. He was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as Premier Consul of the French Republic, Empereur des Français, King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.

The following are his famous quotes:

• "Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."
  

• "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination."

• "Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in."
  

• "If you want a thing done well, do it yourself."

• "Victory belongs to the most persevering."

Dwight David Eisenhower's quotes

Dwight David Eisenhower was a General of the Army (five star general) in the United States Army and U.S. politician, who served as the thirty-fourth President of the United States (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.

As President, he oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System.


Here are some of his quotes:

• "Pessimism never won any battle."

• "No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves."

• "We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective."
  

• "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
  

• "It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger."
  

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century art, he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica (1937).

Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom.

Here are five of his inspiring and famous quotes:

• "Action is the foundational key to all success."

• "Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."
  

• "I do not seek, I find."

• "I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them."
  

• "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working."

Vince Lombardi's inspiring quotations

Vince Lombardi is one of America's most accomplished and respected football coaches.

Here are his famous quotes:

• "Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing - the result."
  

• "The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success."
  

• "Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."

• "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible."
  

• "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

Inspiring Quotes from WALT DISNEY

Walter Elias Disney a.k.a WALT DISNEY was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.

Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He received sixty four Academy Award nominations out of which he won on twenty six occasions. He holds the record for an individual with the most awards and the most nominations. Disney has also won seven Emmy Awards. Disney and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse. He is also well-known as the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, France, Japan and China.

Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, a few years prior to the opening of his Walt Disney World dream project in Orlando, Florida.

and here are his famous quotes....

• "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."
  

• "I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true."
  

• "Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right."
  

• "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

• "If you can dream it, you can do it."

"If you can dream it, you can do it."

Leonardo da Vinci's quotes

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence.

An Italian polymath; a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio.

Leonardo has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Read more about Leonardo da Vinci....


Also, take time to read his inspiring quotations below:

• “Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.”

• “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
  

• "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
  

• "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."
  

• "There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see."
  

Khalil Gibran: Artist, poet and writer!

Khalil Gibran is a Lebanese American artist, poet and writer whose poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages. His full name is Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikhael bin Saâd. He was born in Lebanon (at the time the Mount Lebanon Province of the Ottoman Empire) and spent most of his life in the United States. He is the third bestselling poet in history after Shakespeare and Lao Tse.


Inspiring quotes from Kahlil:

• "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."
  

• "I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires."
  

• "March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path."
  

• "Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."
  

• "A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."
  

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."