Inspirational Quotes

This is a collection of quotes that have helped me in the past get in the right mindset not only motivation to succeed on the sports field but also in business and private life. I love to read these for them times when we all have phases of lack of motivation.

Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.

Unknown

You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
Zig Ziglar

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
Buddha

Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso

A vote for Japan is a vote for the future of rugby. We will do our best to make rugby a global sport.
Yoshiro Mori

He was a professional rugby player in the area that I played as a youngster. So a lot of people who I went to school with knew who he was and knew that he was black. So I would get racist taunts in school.
Ryan Giggs

I like to think I play rugby as it should be played – there are no yellow or red cards in my collection – but I cannot say I’m an angel.
Jonny Wilkinson

I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event in which races were run, and I won these by a considerable margin.
Roger Bannister

It’s a really exciting time to be involved in Welsh rugby.
Jonah Lomu

Rugby is great. The players don’t wear helmets or padding; they just beat the living daylights out of each other and then go for a beer. I love that.
Joe Theismann

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
Babe Ruth

A team will always appreciate a great individual if he’s willing to sacrifice for the group.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

As brilliant an individual that Michael Jordan was, he was not successful until he got with a good team unit.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Michael Jordan and Magic and myself all learned how to play the game in college programs that emphasized the team.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I know it’s not a one man team win or lose.
Brett Favre

The town, the team, it’s a family. That has helped. For some people who have had to deal with some of the problems I have had to deal with don’t have football as an out.
Brett Favre

I, most talented players don’t always succeed. Some don’t even make the team. It’s more what’s inside.
Brett Favre

There is no “i” in team but there is in win.
Michael Jordan

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Vince Lombardi

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi

If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?
Vince Lombardi

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
Vince Lombardi

Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
Vince Lombardi

Winning isn’t everything, but the will to win is everything.
Vince Lombardi

Winning is about heart, not just legs. It’s got to be in the right place.
Lance Armstrong

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Success is almost totally dependent upon drive and persistence. The extra energy required to make another effort or try another approach is the secret of winning.
Denis Waitley

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
Napoleon Hill

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
Napoleon Hill

The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
Napoleon Hill

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win – essential to success.
Napoleon Hill

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.
Napoleon Hill

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
Napoleon Hill

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
George Edward Woodberry

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
Dale Carnegie

Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
David Frost

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Erma Bombeck

Failure is success if we learn from it.
Malcolm Forbes

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
Dale Carnegie

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.
J. Paul Getty

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
Logan P. Smith

I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.
Jonathan Winters

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.
George Burns

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
W. C. Fields

If you want to achieve things in life, you’ve just got to do them, and if you’re talented and smart, you’ll succeed.
Juliana Hatfield

In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.
Anthony J. D’Angelo

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
Bill Cosby

It’s not enough that I should succeed – others should fail.
David Merrick

Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
Ross Perot

No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.
Harold MacMillan

Nothing recedes like success.
Walter Winchell

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.
Elbert Hubbard

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
Lily Tomlin

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.
Sam Ewing

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.
Sloan Wilson

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Bill Gates

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.
Tennessee Williams

Success is dependent on effort.
Sophocles

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Dale Carnegie

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam.
Winston Churchill

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
George S. Patton

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higer the fences get.
Kevin Spacey

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
Al Bernstein

Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.
Arnold H. Glasow

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
Earl Wilson

uccess is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
Booker T. Washington

Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Arnold H. Glasow

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
William Feather

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.
Joe Paterno

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
W. Somerset Maugham

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
Ayn Rand

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
B. C. Forbes

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
Theodore Roosevelt

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.
Salvador Dali

The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.
Margaret Thatcher

Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Frank Outlaw

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Judy Garland

I do it because i can, I can because I want to, I want to because you said I couldn’t.
Unknown

Never tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon
Unknown

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow–
You may succeed with another blow,
Success is failure turned inside out–
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit–
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.
Edgar A. Guest

A champion is someone who gets up, even when he can’t
Unknown

Many of the things you can count, don’t count. Many of the things you can’t count, really count.
Albert Einstein

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry Truman

The longer you stay in one place, the greater your chance of disillusionment.
Art Spander

The dreamers are the saviors of the world.
James Allen

I want to be remembered as the guy who gave his all whenever he was on the field.
Walter Payton

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
Stephen R. Covey

You can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can´t have it. ~ Robert Anthony

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends Napoleon Hill

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.
Ella Fitzgerald

The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good. ~ Ann Landers

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry Truman

How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar. Trina Paulus

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.
John E. Southard

Say what you want to say when you have the feeling and the chance. My greatest regrets are the things I did not do, the opportunities missed and the things unsaid.
Jim Keller

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that´s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off the cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
Annie Dillard.

There are no great men. Just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstance to meet.
Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr.

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reason or principle contain it or stand against it.
Jane Smiley

Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryun

The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed.
Nelson Boswell

The strength of the group is the strength of the leaders.
Vince Lombardi

If you are going to be a champion, you must be willing to pay a greater price.
Bud Wilkinson

The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.
Edward C. Simmons

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.
Vince Lombardi

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way.
Satchel Paige

It isn’t hard to be good from time to time in sports. What is tough is being good every day.
Willie Mays

The sterner the discipline, the greater the devotion.
Pette Carill

Some people develop a wish bone where their back bone should be.
Unknown

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce

The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.
Al Neuharth