Motivational Quotes to Spark Creativity, Drive and Joy

At times motivation seems to radiate out from your body, through your fingertips, through your speech, every word and action aligned with your purpose. At other times, motivation appears as the hardest thing to find and maintain, a dry well where once abundance stood.

Whether you’re swimming in inspiration and motivation, or you need some more of it, let these inspirational quotes and motivational quotes lift your spirits high, or even higher.

These wise quotes and sayings from great thinkers are wonderful to strike up your creativity, drive, and joy, and can help shift your perspective if you’re feeling stuck.

Best Motivational Quotes

“Even if I knew the world would go to pieces tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill
“The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.” ~ Epicurus
“Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul. Always be courteous, never be discouraged. Beware of him who promises something for nothing. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best.” ~ Bernard M. Baruch
“He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.” ~ Samuel Smiles
“You could not prevent a thunderstorm, but you could use the electricity; you could not direct the wind, but you could trim your sail so as to propel your vessel as you pleased, no matter which way the wind blew.” ~ Cora L. V. Hatch
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” ~ Bruce Feirstein
“We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.” ~ Earl Nightingale
“I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.” ~ Eugene V. Debs
“Obedience is the mother of success, and success the parent of salvation.” ~ Aeschylus
“Success always demands a greater effort.” ~ Winston Churchill
Cornel West—Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC license 2.0)
“I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years, ‘Be successful, be successful, be successful,’ as opposed to, ‘Be great, be great, be great.’ There’s a qualitative difference.” ~ Cornel West
“We cannot say what brings us success. We can only pin down what blocks or obliterates success. Eliminate the downside, the thinking errors, and the upside will take care of itself. This is all we need to know.” ~ Rolf Dobelli
“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”~ Albert Einstein
“Restlessness is discontent—and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man—and I will show you a failure.” ~ Thomas Edison
“Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I leave the myth of inspiration and agonized creative inaction to the amateurs. The practice of a profession entails discipline…” ~ Anthony Burgess
“Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.” ~ Helen Hanson
“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
“It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
“The poet invites inspiration by meditation, as the prophets raised themselves to ecstasies by prayer.” ~ Victor Hugo
Eleanor Roosevelt—Credit: Public Domain
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.'” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
“Desire itself is an inspiration. Every man desires to do something in life.Where there is no desire no way would open out.” ~ Acharya Mahapragya
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” ~ Octavia Butler
“It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Albert Einstein—Credit: Public Domain
“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.” ~Albert Einstein
“My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity.” ~ Audre Lorde
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.” ~ Bertrand Russell
“Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that, if you are here, the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful. It by no means consists in rushing prematurely to a showy feat that shall catch the eye and satisfy spectators. It is enough if you work in the right direction.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” ~ Robert Collier
Amy Tan—Credit: Public Domain
“Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.” ~ Amy Tan
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood: who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
“Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.” ~ Denis Waitley
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” ~ Diane Ackerman