50 Inspirational Quotes to Help You Achieve Your Goals Get motivated with insights from these leaders.
By Nina Zipkin •
We've all been there. You've set a goal, and after a few weeks into your new routine, the shine has started to wear off. It's getting a little harder to climb that hill.
But it's important to remember that not only are you not alone, but seriously successful people, like Oprah Winfrey, Michael Phelps and Barbara Corcoran have all experienced what you are dealing with right now.
Don't get overwhelmed and decide to throw in the towel. Find your motivation in the words of these role models.
Related: You'll Never Accomplish Goals You Don't Really Care About
1. "Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the 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 potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." – Muhammad Ali
2. "The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."– Michelle Obama
3. "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." – Tony Robbins
4. "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." – Henry David Thoreau
5. "A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at." – Bruce Lee
6. "I believe the last thing I read at night will likely manifest when I'm sleeping. You become what you think about the most." - Daymond John
7. "Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground." – Theodore Roosevelt
8. "It's up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that." – Cheryl Strayed
9. "I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20." – Warren Buffett
10. "You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals." - Booker T. Washington
Related: 7 Steps to Achieving Any Goal in Life
11. "You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream." - C.S. Lewis
12. "This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook -- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun!" - Julia Child
13. "You're always working to improve, and you're always being critiqued on your next performance. It's not about what you've done. There's always room to grow." - Misty Copeland
14. "We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in." Sheryl Sandberg
15. "If we have a goal and a plan, and are willing to take risks and mistakes and work as team, we can choose to do the hard thing." - Scott Kelly
16. "Some failure in life is inevitable. 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
17. "Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine." - Jack Ma
18. "We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in." - Arianna Huffington
19. "You don't learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing, and falling over." - Richard Branson
20. "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." - Steve Jobs
Related: 6 Tips for Goal-Setting That, Trust Me, They Don't Teach You in College
21. "A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive." - Walt Disney
22. "The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on." - Barack Obama
23. "It's harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb. Continue to seek new goals." - Pat Summitt
24. "To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate." - John Glenn
25. "You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute." - Tina Fey
26. "If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it." - Elon Musk
27. "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve." - Jeff Bezos
28. "Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it." - Oprah Winfrey
29. "The question I ask myself like almost every day is, 'Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?'" - Mark Zuckerberg
30. "I fear failure, but I won't let it stop me. Sometimes you just got to do it or else it just doesn't happen." - Mark Cuban
Related: The 4 People Who Will Help You Achieve Your Goals
31. "The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don't improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant." - Indra Nooyi
32. "Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct." - Barbara Corcoran
33. "Sometimes, I shake if I have to do something that I've never done before –– maybe not noticeably, but inside. But I'll do it, because I know it's not an insurmountable task; I've done plenty of tasks in my life." - Martha Stewart
34. "Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you." - Tony Hsieh
35. "You can always find a solution if you try hard enough." - Lori Greiner
36. "I think goals should never be easy, they should force you to work, even if they are uncomfortable at the time." - Michael Phelps
37. "I know how it looks. But just start. Nothing is insurmountable." - Lin-Manuel Miranda
38. "A goal without a timeline is just a dream." - Robert Herjavec
39. "If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things." - Albert Einstein
40. "Everyone's dream can come true if you just stick to it and work hard." - Serena Williams
Related: Science-Backed Brain Hacks to Crush Your Goals
41. "It always seems impossible until it's done." - Nelson Mandela
42. "You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you." - Maya Angelou
43. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
44. "Hustling is putting every minute and all your effort into achieving the goal at hand. Every minute needs to count." - Gary Vaynerchuk
45. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison
46. "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks." - Bill Gates
47. "Instead of looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there then." - Diana Ross
48. "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." - Henry Ford
49. "You have to be able to get up and dust yourself off and always be going forward." - Rita Moreno
50. "To live a fulfilled life, we need to keep creating the "what is next", of our lives. Without dreams and goals there is no living, only merely existing, and that is not why we are here." - Mark Twain
