motivation quotes from influential philosophers, authors and people
"Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive."
125
"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing."
919
"To be is to do."
993
"You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked."
1153
"The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience."
1154
"The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering."
1155
"Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience."
1156
"Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable."
1157
"Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow."
1161
"This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes."
1162
"Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy."
1163
"The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it."
1164
"We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change. We have evolved to always live with a certain degree of dissatisfaction and insecurity, because it’s the mildly dissatisfied and insecure creature that’s going to do the most work to innovate and survive."
1166
"If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head."
1169
"Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different."
1170
"You cannot be a powerful and life-changing presence to some people without being a joke or an embarrassment to others."
1171
"No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with."
1172
"All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t’, — which is just another way of saying that you can’t."
1196
"Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people."
230