Quotes to inspire and reflect

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there's an adventure for him -- and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up.

Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Let every man do that which is right, strive with all his might towards the goal which can never be obtained, develop to the last breath the gifts with which the gracious Creator has endowed him, and never cease to learn. For life is short, art eternal.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

Winners make it happen. Losers let it happen.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

Everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Plan your work and work your plan.

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

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.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.

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

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Make no small plans for they have not the power to stir men’s blood.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.

If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way. Don't wait for great opportunities. Seize common, everyday ones and make them great.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

For every disciplined effort, there is a multiple reward.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

Plan for the future, because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life.

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny, but what we put into it is ours.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened among all of the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit; not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by nonparticipation in what we believe is evil.

At first glance, his greatest contribution, the League of Nations, appears to have failed. Still, despite the fact that the League was crippled by his contemporaries and rejected by his own country, I have no doubt that Wilson’s work will one day emerge in more effective form.

Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him… He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career.

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands the whole person. Toscanini demonstrates this in every manifestation of his life.

I respect Lenin as a man who gave all his energy, at a total sacrifice of his personal life, to dedicating himself to the realization of socialist justice. I don’t consider his methods appropriate. But one thing is certain: Men such as he are the guardians and renewers of mankind’s conscience.

Outside Russia, Lenin and Engels are of course not valued as scientific thinkers and no one would be interested in refuting them as such. The same might also be the case in Russia, except there one doesn’t dare say so.

You, who have gotten under the skin of so many people and, indeed, of humanity, have had no occasion to slip under mine.

I understand Jung’s vague, imprecise notions, but I consider them worthless—a lot of talk without any clear direction. If there has to be a psychiatrist, I should prefer Freud. I do not believe in him, but I love very much his concise style and his original, although rather extravagant, mind.

Shaw is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest figures. I once said of him that his plays remind me of Mozart. There is not one superfluous word in Shaw’s prose, just as there is not one superfluous note in Mozart’s" music.

I do not believe Mme. Curie is power-hungry or hungry for whatever. She is an unpretentious, honest person with more than her share of responsibilities and burdens. She has a sparkling intelligence, but despite her passionate nature she is not attractive enough to present a danger to anyone.

When the Nazis came into power, Einstein I think was faced with a dilemma. Should he continue with his pacifism, or should he do what he could to resist the Nazis in their effort to get control of the whole world?

Although he knew who he was; although he was aware of his celebrity, he always took it with humor and always laughed at it and at himself.